Minimans
by rbnnybt
Summary: Starring Reid and children at the National Museum of Natural History, and featuring stuffed and unstuffed animals.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

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Chapter 1

Dr. Spencer Reid was just finishing a 500,000-word treatise on the climatological effects of filling the world with bright white sheep when the doorbell rang. On the one hand, the bright whiteness of the sheep would reflect sunlight into space, much as snow or ice would reflect sunlight, thus slowing the progression of global warming caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. On the other hand, the sheep themselves, like all ruminants, would produce flatulence, thus pumping their own supply of methane, a greenhouse gas even greenhousier than carbon dioxide, into the fragile atmosphere. After deriving and employing many heretofore unknown mathematical equations, complete with fudge factors to avoid dividing by zero, Dr. Spencer Reid concluded that it was extremely inadvisable to fill the world with bright white sheep. It was a deathwish for Life on Earth, and Dr. Spencer Reid, whose duties included saving humans from humans and saving humans from humanity and saving humanity from humans and saving humanity from humanity, was damn well going to let the world in on this unnecessary and patently obvious information, no matter how many people got their eyeballs stuck upwards in their ocular orbits from rolling their eyes into their heads.

"What's up, Doc?" the doorbell sounded its default Bugs Bunny ringtone.

Reid saved his document and popped up from his armchair to answer the door. He caught his breath at the sight before him.

It was Hotch.

Reid froze his eyes, nose, mouth, and other facial features into an expression of idiotic blankness. His mind churned at a ridiculously fast pace, like Speedy Gonzalez and Taz the Tasmanian Devil put together. Why had Hotch shown up at his door on a Friday evening? Why had Hotch shown up unexpected and unannounced? For some unknowable reason, Reid felt like a little boy caught red-handed by his Mommy or Daddy. He feared that Hotch had come to reprimand him for some unknown transgression that he had unknowingly committed during the work week. Dr. Spencer Reid, like all founts of unnecessary-until-it-became-necessary knowledge, was afraid of the unknown.

"Hi Reid, sorry to barge in on you like this," Hotch said, stepping into the apartment as Reid stumbled backwards out of the way.

"Hi Hotch...Uh...Welcome," Reid said, maintaining an expression of idiotic blankness while defusing his face of guilty anxiety and infusing his face with innocent nonchalance.

"I have a huge favor to ask of you, Reid," Hotch said, bringing forward the reason for the favor.

It was Jack, holding a plushy triceratops toy and sucking a large green lollipop. Reid looked down at the Young Hotchner. He shuffled his feet back and forth against the kitchen floor, uncertain of his next step. The Young Hotchner stared at the nervously shifting man, his eyes boring, as the man imagined, into the man's pajama pants. Reid felt his leg, the one nearest the Young Hotchner, itching and burning beneath its Spiderman-covered flannel. Being stared at by Jack was like being stared at by a miniature version of Hotch. Dr. Spencer Reid, like all child luddites, was afraid of minimans, minimans being the term that child luddites used to refer to children.

"Do you remember my brother Sean?" Hotch asked, frowning in concern at Reid's spasmodically twitching facial features.

"Sure," Reid replied robotically, "Sean Hotchner, Chef, specialties chocolate-covered bacon, Thanksgiving turducken, and wedding cakes in the shape of the Taj Mahal, representing eternal love in life and death..." he stopped at a deepening of Hotch's frown.

"Sean had a little accident while delivering a wedding cake to the Hamptons," Hotch explained. "He tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and fell face-first onto the dome of the Taj Mahal, where the bride and groom figurines were standing. The figurines ended up in his mouth, and he accidentally swallowed them. He's in surgery to remove them, and I'd like to be there when he wakes up. I've got a flight to New York that leaves in an hour. Can you watch Jack for the weekend?"

"Of course!" Reid declared, so relieved that he was not in trouble that he found himself agreeing to associate with the frightening miniman.

"Thank you so much, Reid," Hotch said, bending down to bid his son farewell. "Jack, remember what I told you before we left the house?" he asked his son.

"Be good," Jack nodded cheerfully, "Be good to Uncle Spenny, and don't make Uncle Spenny cry."

"Yes, Jack, that's right," Hotch smoothed his son's messy brown hair. "Daddy's going to visit Uncle Sean for the weekend. Daddy's going to be back to pick you up on Sunday night or Monday morning, OK? Think you're going to be alright with Uncle Spenny for that long, Jack?"

"Be good," Jack nodded again, "Be good to Uncle Spenny, and don't make Uncle Spenny cry."

"Think you're going to be alright with Jack for that long, Reid?" Hotch asked.

"Of course!" Reid declared, painting a false wild-eyed smile upon his still twitching facial features. "We're going to have tons of fun this weekend! Aren't we, Jack?" he bent down to address the child.

The child nodded without speaking, his mouth occupied with the lollipop. Reid hoped that Jack intended to keep his promise about not making Uncle Spenny cry.

"Alright, that's settled then. What a relief!" Hotch backed out of the apartment, simultaneously wheeling in a suitcase to take his place. "These are some of Jack's clothes, toys, and books," he explained the suitcase. "You two look like you're getting along pretty well, so I'm going to leave you to it. Thanks again, Reid. I really appreciate you doing this on such short notice. I called everyone else first and got their answering machines, but I was running out of time, and I figured that you'd be home on Friday night. Call me if you need anything. I'll check back in as soon as I get to the hospital."

"No problem, Hotch," Reid waved at his boss as Hotch turned the corner to head down the stairs, "I hope Sean's alright," he wiggled his fingers at the departing figure.

"Bye Daddy!" Jack waved his lollipop.

"Hi Uncle Spenny!" Jack grinned through a mouthful of green-tinted teeth.

"Hi Jack," Reid greeted the small creature. "Here, let me close the door. We don't want to let the cold in and..." he didn't finish the thought before he spotted a blonde woman turning the corner from the stairs.

It was JJ, holding Henry in her arms and dragging a suitcase behind her.

"Reid, can you do me a favor this weekend?" JJ asked breathlessly. "It's Will. He flew back to Louisiana on Wednesday, for a few days off to hang out with his friends at home. They went fishing on a fanboat this afternoon, and Will fell into the bayou, got sucked into the fan, and lost a small piece of his scalp. He might have lost a small piece of his skull as well, leaving him with a hole in his head. The surgeons are patching him up right now. I'm flying down there to take care of him, so I need someone to watch Henry for the weekend. Can you, Spence? Can you please? I called everyone else first and got their answering machines, but I was running out of time, and I figured that you'd be home on Friday night. Please, Spence?" the worried flustered woman held out the chubby blonde toddler sucking his thumb.

"Of course!" Reid declared, unfurling the false wild-eyed smile that characterized his state of false but convincing confidence.

He gathered Henry into his arms and giggled shyly as the child wrapped a pair of saliva-covered arms around his neck.

"I brought over some of Henry's clothes and toys," JJ wheeled in a suitcase, "And a supply of diapers," JJ dumped a bag of Huggies onto the floor, "And a list of emergency phone numbers and food allergies," JJ handed over a color-coded laminated chart. "OK, I think that's all there is for now. My flight leaves in an hour, so I've got to skedaddle if I'm going to catch it. I'll check back in as soon as I get off the plane in New Orleans. Henry," she addressed her son, "Be good, Henry. Mommy's going to go take care of Daddy now. Daddy's going to be just fine, and Mommy and Daddy are going to come back for you in no time at all. You be good to Uncle Spenny, Henry, and no matter what you do, don't make Uncle Spenny cry," she kissed Henry on the forehead.

"Good!" Henry laughed, "Spenny cry!" Henry clapped.

Reid looked into the child's big blue eyes, searching for a sign of understanding, feeling a sneaking suspicion that Henry had misinterpreted JJ's orders about not making Uncle Spenny cry.

"Think you're going to be alright with Henry for the weekend, Spence?" JJ asked.

"Of course!" Reid declared, declarations of false confidence now an ingrained habit of his. "I've already got Jack for the weekend. Hotch's brother Sean swallowed the bride and groom figurines from the Taj Mahal, and Hotch had to fly to New York to take care of him. Actually, I'm glad that you brought Henry over. The more the merrier!" he twirled Henry around, "Isn't that right, Jack?" he asked as Jack latched onto his leg and twirled around with them.

JJ looked down at Jack, noticing the Young Hotchner for the first time. Her maternal fears vanished in a flash of insight. If Hotch was willing to leave his beloved offspring with Reid for the weekend, then there was no reason for JJ to experience a single qualm about leaving her beloved offspring in the same position. She ruffled Henry's hair, Jack's hair, and Reid's hair, before backing into the hallway and turning to head down the stairs.

"Thank you so much, Spence," JJ waved back, "Call me if you need anything," she made phone fingers next to her ear, "Bye Henry! Bye Jack!" she blew kisses at the children.

Reid watched JJ disappear around the corner. He shrank back into the apartment, closing and locking the door behind him. He peeled off the expression of false wild-eyed confidence and pasted on an expression of genuine sad-eyed forlornity. His sense of bravado had vanished, because he had glommed onto a single statement that had emerged, in identical words, from both Hotch and JJ. They had both said the exact same thing. They had both called everyone else first, and only when they had found that everyone else was busy had they been desperate enough to leave their beloved offspring with him for the weekend. Reid knew that he was a child luddite, but the words, spoken in the same breezy tone, as if nothing could have been more obvious, still hurt his feelings. The words goaded him into a state of resolve. He was going to be the best damn babysitter that had ever slithered, crawled, or lumbered the Earth. He was going to be SpiderMommyAndDaddy, the kind that one would not wish to encounter if one found oneself shrunk down to arthropod level and trapped in the silky embrace of an arachnid web. When he was through with them this weekend, Jack Hotchner and Henry LaMontagne were going to be SpiderMinimans, the kind that one would not wish to discover at one's window the night the electricity went out. Afterwards, he was going to publish a 1,000,000-word treatise on the subject of parenting, and all who worshipped at the altar of Dr. Spock would switch their allegiance to worship at the altar of Dr. Reid instead.

Reid stared at the minimans staring back at him, all bright eyes, soft cheeks, and thumb- or lollipop-sucking lips. He herded his small flock towards the couch in the adjoining living room. There, he sat them down to converse with each other, while he busied himself with his laptop, researching and studying the tenets of proper parenting on Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia.

* * *

"Physical security, physical development, intellectual security, intellectual development, emotional security, emotional development," Reid recited a chart of parental duties from the "Parenting" article on Wikipedia.

"Physical security," he read, "...shelter, clothing, nourishment, safety, health..." he snapped the laptop shut before he could be further overwhelmed by the sheer number of parental duties.

Reid glanced up, deer-in-headlights style, at Jack and Henry sitting on the couch across the coffee table. He checked the coffee table. It was oval, so it bore no hard edges that the minimans could hit their heads on. He checked the couch. It was deep, so it supported the minimans with no danger of the minimans rolling off and hitting their heads on the floor. He checked the minimans. They looked exceedingly bored, their wandering eyes and twiddling thumbs warning of dark angry storm systems ahead.

Reid had an idea. He would feed the minimans the Fruit of the Stupid Box to occupy their attention while he prepared the evening meal. Later, when the minimans had been fed, bathed, put to bed, and awakened again, he would attempt to undo the intellectual damage.

"Who like cartoons?" Reid asked brightly.

"Me, me, me!" Jack raised his hand.

"Tooooooons!" Henry bounced his large blonde head.

"OK," Reid grabbed a shoebox of DVDs from the bottom shelf of the coffee table. "Cartoons it is! How do you like Looney Tunes?" he held up a colorful Warner Brothers DVD for Jack's approval.

"Looney Tunes?" Jack frowned, "What's that?"

"Bunny! Piggy!" Henry pointed at the pictures on the cover.

"You don't know Looney Tunes?" Reid asked in amazement. "You don't watch Looney Tunes at home? What a travesty! Oh, Hotch, how could you not introduce your beloved offspring to the glory of Looney Tunes?"

With a huff of total disbelief, partial disappointment, and annular anger, Reid started the DVD.

"Here, Jack, Henry, you two sit here and watch these cartoons while I make dinner, OK?" Reid suggested nervously.

The minimans stared, without responding, at the Stupid Box. Their attention was occupied by the bunnies, piggies, duckies, kitties, birdies, coyoties, roadrunnies, mousies, and Tasmanian devilies filling the colorful screen.

"What's up, Doc?" said Bugs Bunny from the Stupid Box.

"What's up, Doc?" Jack and Henry clapped and bounced in unison.

Reid tiptoed away from the mesmerized minimans, hoping that the Spell of the Stupid Box would hold their attention long enough for him to provide nourishment. He scurried into the kitchen, where he could still see the minimans over the back of the couch. He was glad that he had not needed to take more drastic action. If he had not been able to see the minimans from the kitchen, he would have resorted to handcuffing the minimans to the coffee table and each other to ensure their health and safety. That would have caused significant psychological damage, possibly severe enough to turn the minimans into a pair of psychotic UnSubs somewhere down the line. Thirty years from now, when the minimans had grown into sadistic serial killers, the wizened decrepit BAU would have to chase them down in walkers and wheelchairs. Reid would be the only one not too old and shaky to fire his gun at them, thus ensuring that the murderers would get away to continue their heinous crime spree.

In the kitchen, Reid extinguished the cluster of neurons in his brain that had converted adorable children into sadistic serial killers. He studied the list of Henry's food allergies. Henry was allergic to gluten, ruling out any and all grain products for dinner. Henry was allergic to beef and pork, ruling out the hot dogs that Reid had considered serving. Henry was allergic to all vegetables except peas and carrots, and JJ had noted that Henry hated both peas and carrots. Reid looked over at Henry, studied the list, and looked over at Henry again. He wondered how the child had managed to survive this long on Earth.

Reid had an idea. For dinner, he would substitute potatoes for grains, eggs for meat, and peas and carrots for peas and carrots. Where JJ had failed to instill in Henry an appreciation for peas and carrots, Reid would succeed. Under the guidance of SpiderMommyAndDaddy, Henry would eat his peas and carrots, and he would like them too.

Reid started four pots of water boiling on the stove, one on each burner. While the water boiled, he averted his eyes to prevent the water from spiting him with non-boilance. It was a trick that he had learned as a chemist, the first time that he had stepped foot into a laboratory. "Never make eye contact with the water," he reminded himself. He tied an apron around his waist and retrieved several large brown potatoes and several large brown eggs from the refrigerator. He peeled the potatoes, poked away the dark spots, cut them up into small wedges, and dropped them into a pot of boiling water. He dropped the eggs into another pot. From the freezer, he retrieved a bag of peas and a bag of carrots. He poured the contents separately into the other two pots.

Reid waited at the stove, whistling softly to himself and grinning with satisfaction at his genius-inspired fully-boiled dinner menu. He wondered if Sean Hotchner, Chef, would approve. Perhaps Sean, when he had been voided of bride and groom figurines from the Taj Mahal wedding cake, would incorporate Reid's fully-boiled dishes into the menu at his restaurant. They could compose the Christmas Dinner Special. Reid grinned wider, congratulating himself while utterly deluding himself about his culinary creations. They could only compose the Christmas Dinner Special at a prison colony on Pluto, where all the sadistic UnSubs caught by the BAU had to spend the rest of their miserable lives, digging for minerals on the frigid demoted planetoid.

"Uncle Spenny, I'm hungry!" Jack wandered over from the Stupid Box, Henry crawling along at his feet.

"I know, Jack, I know," Reid replied, "I'm hungry too. Don't worry, Jack, dinner's coming right up! Do you like potatoes, Jack? Taters, Henry? What about eggs? And yummy peas and carrots?"

"Ewwwwwww! Peas and carrots! I hate peas and carrots!" Jack scrunched up his face.

"Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!" Henry shook his head back and forth until Reid, concerned about the effects of whiplash upon the developing brain, reached out to halt the behavior.

"You know, Jack," Reid whispered secretively, "I used to hate peas and carrots too, back when I was your age. But one day, I discovered the right way to eat them. Peas and carrots are totally yummy if you eat them in just the right way. I bet you only think they're icky, because you've never eaten them the right way."

"Eat them the right way?" Jack asked, "How do I eat them the right way?"

"Let me demonstrate," Reid said, filling a small bowl with a helping of peas and a small plate with a helping of carrots. "Listen up, you two, and watch carefully," he filled his voice with awe and wonder, "Let Uncle Spenny show you the right way to eat peas and carrots."

With a large spoon, Reid mashed up the peas until they were nothing but a green mush in the bowl. He plucked two warm carrot sticks out of the plate and stuck them, officiously and one at a time, into his two nostrils. He plucked another warm carrot stick out of the plate and dipped it into the pea mush before biting it in half and chewing and swallowing in tasty satisfaction. Jack and Henry stared, eyes widening and bottoms bouncing from their positions on the kitchen floor.

"I want to try it! I want to try it!" Jack screamed.

"Me try!" Henry concurred.

Reid grinned evilly. He motioned for the minimans to return to their positions on the couch as he brought over a tray of peas and carrots. He picked the four thinnest carrot sticks, thin enough to stick into miniature nostrils but not thin enough to be sucked into miniature lungs, and held them out for Jack and Henry to stick into their nostrils. He held up a mirror for the minimans to inspect their appearance. They squealed in delight and happily dipped carrot sticks into pea mush, giving Reid a minute to mash up the potatoes and eggs, combining them into a mixture that also included generous helpings of ketchup and mustard. He poured three glasses of milk, grabbed a tin of cookies that Garcia had brought him earlier that day, and plopped himself down on the floor next to the couch.

The minimans and their keeper relished their evening meal amidst the cross-dressing antics of Bugs Bunny as he-she-it tried to escape the dim-witted rifle-toting Elmer Fudd. After dinner, when all the peas and carrots had disappeared down regular and miniature gullets alike, when even the nostril carrots had been dipped into pea mush and consumed, when the keeper had wailed for a full minute upon the floor for allowing the minimans to consume their nostril carrots, it was bathtime.

On its own, bathtime was uneventful, if blaring high-pitched squealing, wild uninhibited splashing, and total bathroom destruction could be considered uneventful. Even less eventful was the eventual but inevitable event that caused the keeper to end up in the bathtub with the minimans. The keeper flipped himself out of the bathtub, dripping and bubbling from every surface, as the minimans flailed their miniature limbs against the water, sending additional units of dihyrogen monoxide splashing all over the bathroom walls.

One by one, the keeper lifted the minimans out of the bathtub. He wrapped them in bath towels to keep them warm as he hunted for pajamas in their suitcases. When the minimans had been dried and dressed in matching Spiderman pajamas, ones that matched the keeper's own Spiderman pajamas, it was time for the keeper to cajole them into bed.

"But I'm not sleepy!" Jack protested, "I wanna watch some more Looney Tunes!"

Henry yawned a miniature yawn.

"How are you going to turn into Spiderman if you don't go to bed?" Reid asked Jack in a serious tone, as if negotiating with an UnSub in the interrogation room. "Don't you remember the story of how Peter Parker turned into Spiderman? Peter Parker was a bespectacled young dork who got bitten by a radioactive spider at the museum. He didn't turn into Spiderman right away. He only turned into Spiderman after he woke up the following morning, after the spider venom had done its work overnight. The following morning, Peter Parker woke up with the agility and proportionate strength of an arachnid. In my opinion, Peter Parker would never had turned into Spiderman if he had not gone to bed early the night before."

"Really?" Jack considered the information. "Did Peter Parker really have to go to bed to turn into Spiderman?"

"Yes, he did," Reid explained, "He had to go to bed early...And he wanted to go to bed early, because he was all dizzy and discombobulated from the spider bite."

"Dis...com...bobul...ated?" Jack healed some of the intellectual damage caused by the Stupid Box.

"Discombobulated," Reid repeated.

"Discombobulated!" Jack repeated back, "Discombobulated!" he raced down the hallway towards the bedroom.

Reid scooped up an already sleeping Henry and followed Jack into the bedroom. He hoped that Jack did not have an eidetic memory. He hoped that by the time Jack woke up the following morning, he would have forgotten the bullshit that his keeper had fed him about Peter Parker turning into Spiderman after a good night's sleep. The keeper was deathly afraid that the miniman would wake up on Saturday morning, demanding to know why he had not acquired the agility and proportionate strength of an arachnid. The emotional damage from such an event would take years and years to undo. Jack would turn into a sadistic UnSub even earlier than Reid had anticipated.

In the bedroom, Jack climbed into a high metal-framed bed. Reid was duly impressed with Jack's athletic ability. He raised the covers and laid Henry gently beneath the warm down quilt. Jack wiggled into the sheets on the other side of the bed and waited for Reid to tuck him in. Reid performed his parental duties.

When the minimans had been tucked in and warmed up for a good night's sleep, their keeper stepped back to admire the scene. Henry slept quietly with his plushy stegosaur while Jack waited expectantly with his plushy triceratops. Reid wondered what the hell Jack was waiting for.

"Once upon a time..." Reid decided that Jack was waiting for a bedtime story.

"No, Uncle Spenny, I don't wanna hear a story," Jack said, "I wanna go to sleep so I can turn into Spiderman. We want night-night kissies," he pointed, shyly and in turn, at his cheek, the cheek of his triceratops, Henry's cheek, and the cheek of Henry's stegosaur.

Uncle Spenny, relieved that he did not have to make up a bullshit bedtime story to exacerabate the emotional damage that he had already inflicted, obliged, shyly and in turn, planting kisses upon Jack's cheek, the cheek of Jack's triceratops, Henry's cheek, and the cheek of Henry's stegosaur. Something felt incomplete after the round of kissies, until Uncle Spenny remembered to kiss the cheek of his own allosaur on the nightstand.

When all the minimans and their reptilian cohorts had fallen asleep, the keeper returned to the bathroom to clean up the mess. In the hallway, he paused, concerned about letting the minimans out of his sight. What if a sadistic UnSub were to climb up the exterior of the building like Spiderman, cut a hole in the window, wiggle his way through it, and snatch the precious minimans as they slept?

No sooner had the question been raised than Reid squashed it underfoot. All this bullshitting was affecting his intelligence. No sadistic UnSub would come after the precious minimans as long as he was around. The sadistic UnSub was far more likely to come after him instead.

Reid shook his head to clear it and turned towards more immediate concerns.

In disgust, he fished a used diaper out of the bathroom trash can. He held the offensive object gingerly between his thumb and index finger, uncertain of his next step. What was he to do with such an object?

To Reid, who was able to recite the chemical composition of human excrement, the object was a Level 3 Biohazard, not suitable for disposal with the rest of the garbage. He required some method of neutralizing its bacterial properties before he tossed it out of the living room window into the open dumpster on the other side of the parking lot. He considered his options.

Heat was an excellent killer of bacteria. Should he microwave the diaper? Perhaps he could stick it into the 400-degree oven. He could also incinerate it in the natural gas fire of the stove burner.

None of the options appealed to him. He did not relish the thought of the biohazard contacting any area reserved for preparing culinary delights.

He considered sticking the diaper into the 0-degree freezer, but rejected the idea for the same reasons.

He considered zapping the diaper with ultraviolet radiation from a UV lamp that he stored in a closet, along with other chemical supplies that as a Ph.D.-certified chemist, Reid still used every once in awhile to satisfy his deep-seated desire to "Blow Shit Up".

Finally, in a stroke of brilliance, Reid stumbled upon a solution to the problem. He would freeze the diaper alright, but not in the refrigerator. He would do a far more thorough job of it. He would freeze the diaper in liquid nitrogen, from the tank of liquid nitrogen that he stored in his chemical supplies closet. The liquid nitrogen was normally used to make instant ice cream, but this time, it would be used to flash freeze human excrement at -196 degrees Celsius.

Reid wheeled a giant LN2 tank out of the closet. He turned the blue knob at the top, sighing in satisfaction as the tank dispensed colorless cryogenic liquid into a large Dewar flask. It squeaked as it did so, and Reid tapped his foot in time with the syncopated rhythms of the lab. When enough of the liquid had accumulated in the flask, he turned the knob to shut off the stream and wiped away the layer of bright white snow that had condensed upon the hose. He wheeled the tank back into its closet and patted its cold surface lovingly. He let go of all his inhibitions and kissed the cold surface. His lips were stuck for a panic-inducing stomach-dropping moment before he managed to wrench them away.

Back in the kitchen, Reid dipped the diaper into the flask. He let the diaper fizz away within the liquid for several minutes before he used a pair of insulated tongs to retrieve a solidly frozen chunk. He grabbed a small cardboard box from a cabinet, dropped the chunk into the box, and spent the next fifteen minutes wrapping the box in several layers of duct tape, each layer thicker than the one beneath it and each layer completely obscuring the cardboard sides. Finally, he placed the hermetically sealed box into a large black garbage bag, stepped to the living room window, took aim, and tossed the now-harmless object towards the open dumpster. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bag hit the near lip of the dumpster and maintained enough momentum to fall over the side. It disappeared out of sight and out of mind.

Contrary to the delusions of Dr. Spencer Reid, the LN2-frozen diaper inside the box under the duct tape inside the garbage bag did not compose a thermodynamically closed system. It still received infrared radiation from the rest of the universe, and in time, it would still thaw and putrefy. However, by the time that happened, the garbage company would have hauled the diaper to a landfill, and Dr. Spencer Reid would no longer be around to see it, hear of it, or speak of it. Dr. Spencer Reid was free to indulge, with a clear conscience, in his obsessive bleaching of the counters and mopping of the floors, without expending another thought upon the offending object. Dr. Spencer Reid did not even feel like a sadistic UnSub, dumping away a set of eviscerated entrails from one of the victims that he had exsanguinated and dismembered in the bathtub.

After the round of cleaning, Reid collapsed onto the couch. He was tired, light-headed from exhaustion and the fumes of cleaning products. Despite his weariness, he popped up, recalling that he had planned to check on Jack and Henry after he finished cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. He padded softly down the hallway, peeked into the bedroom doorway, and assured himself that the minimans were sound asleep, with no danger of hitting their heads on the floor after he had surrounded the bed, on all sides, with reinforced cardboard walls like the concentric rings of the Pentagon.

The keeper patted himself on the back, proud of his accomplishments for the evening. He had successfully performed his foremost parental duty. He had provided physical security.

It was only 10:00 PM. The night was still young. The keeper would wait up for calls from his superiors while he brainstormed and diagrammed some weekend plans for his minimans. When JJ called, he would cryptically inform her that Henry had loved his peas and carrots, and she would be so very jealous that he, SpiderMommyAndDaddy, had accomplished in one single evening what she had failed to accomplish in two whole years. Indeed, she would be green with envy, but also bursting with joy, and the next time she needed a babysitter, he would be the first one she called.

* * *

Additional physical/intellectual/emotional/psychological damage to be incurred over 5 remaining chapters. Methinks a trip to the Museum of Natural History is in store. Hopefully there will not be any sadistic UnSubs there.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

* * *

Chapter 2

Dr. Spencer Reid was just finishing an indefinitely long treatise on all the solutions to all the world's problems when he woke up. Since his eidetic memory did not cover non-waking states of consciousness, Dr. Spencer Reid forgot his dream as soon as he woke up, and all the solutions to all the world's problems were lost forever.

Reid pushed himself up to a sitting position on the couch. It was not unusual for him to fall asleep on the couch, so the mere fact that he had fallen asleep on the couch did not alert him to the presence of home invaders. He performed his usual Saturday morning routine, making and downing a cup of coffee before any administrations of personal hygiene could be considered, much less undertaken. It was only when he was fully awake, padding down the hallway towards his bedroom, that the previous night's events came flooding out of his memory.

"Minimans!" Reid thought in fear tinged with warm fuzzies.

"Spiderman!" Reid thought in dread tinged with cold spinies.

The child luddite, who had now shortened the descriptor to childite, sprang into action. His first priority was to prevent any invocation of Spiderman by the older miniman, who had been bullshitted into believing that he would wake up with the agility and proportionate strength of an arachnid if he went to bed early the night before. The keeper darted back into the kitchen, checking all the counters, cabinets, and drawers, until he found the instrument of preemption that he had wisely prepared. It was a helmet of wonders, bearing a miniature railroad track that circled the shiny metal spheroid, complete with working train car full of passengers, all members of superorder Dinosauria, drawn in washable marker onto the tiny plastic-paned windows.

Reid donned the helmet. Fearing that the helmet would not be enough to distract the minimans from their Spiderman pajamas, he added a pair of hologram glasses bearing a terrifying image of the cannibal-scavenger Tyrannosaurus rex over each lens. He worked up the confidence to enter the bedroom.

On the bed, in a pool of bright morning sunshine, the minimans stirred.

"Hey Jack," Reid whispered to the older miniman. "Rise and shine, Jack. It's Saturday morning. Time for breakfast and Looney Tunes!"

Jack squirmed beneath the covers and opened his big brown eyes. He let out a blood-curdling scream at the sight that greeted him. The scream awakened Henry, who joined in screaming, shrinking away from the helmeted bespectacled creature that bore down upon him. The traumatized minimans kicked and cried until the equally traumatized keeper ripped off the helmet and glasses.

"Oh sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" Reid squealed in remorse. "It's OK, it's OK! It's only me, Uncle Spenny! There's nothing to be afraid of," he hugged the minimans to himself, patting them on the back to calm them, performing a cost-benefit analysis that weighed the benefits of distraction against the costs of terror in terms of psychological damage incurred.

"Uncle Spenny, you scared me," Jack whimpered. "I thought you were the Boogeyman coming to get me."

"I'm sorry, Jack, I'm sorry, Uncle Spenny is really sorry," Reid lifted the older miniman out of the bed and helped him change out of his Spiderman pajamas.

"C'mere, Henry," Reid gathered the younger miniman into his arms, "Time to take off those uncomfy pajamas!" he removed the Spiderman pajamas and stuffed both sets of garments under the bed.

"OK, who wants breakfast? What should we have? More eggs? Scrambled eggs? How about peas and carrots? Yummy vegetables for breakfast?" Reid babbled aimlessly as he dressed the minimans in matching sweaters knitted by Garcia in her dark hacker cave.

The sweaters bore the image from the Pioneer plaques, metal plates aboard the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts that had exited the solar system after completing their missions in the 1970s. If the plaques were intercepted by extraterrestrials millions of years in the future, then the pictures were supposed to tell them about us, our solar system, and our primitive understanding of the universe. Garcia had replaced the nude man and woman on the plaques with an image of a fully dressed little boy wearing a sweater bearing the image from the Pioneer plaques, and so on and so on and so on, until the images reached the display limit of the finest thread.

"Is that a T. rex?" Jack reached for the glasses, no longer afraid now that the glasses lay inert on a bed instead of alive on a face.

"Yes, indeed," Reid replied, "Tyrannosaurus rex, King of the Tyrant Reptiles, roamed western North America in a huge range until the K-T extinction event 65 million years ago, caused by..."

"I wanna see a T. rex!" Jack interrupted Reid, "I wanna see a T. rex!"

"T. rex!" Henry laughed without comprehension.

"Who wants to go see T. rex?" Reid tapped his hands against his knees, peering down at the minimans on the floor. "Wash up, breakfast, then T. rex?" he herded his flock into the bathroom.

Amidst hearty screams of "T. rex! T. rex!" and sincere, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to explain the dietary habits of "Superfamily Tyrannosauroidea", the minimans were cleaned, fed, and bundled up in preparation for their visit to the National (Free) Museum of Natural History. The keeper smiled to himself as he buckled the minimans into their seats, Henry into his carseat, Jack into the backseat. He breathed in the chilly November air, feeling good about himself in his role as MommyAndDaddy, now that the irksome spider-related prefix had been dropped. He looked forward to visiting his beloved stuffed animal museum. The minimans might have screamed the loudest, but it was really the keeper who most wanted to go see T. rex.

* * *

At the entrance to the museum, where the minimans and the keeper walked through the metal detectors, Reid failed to notice a dark-haired boy, around ten years old, staring at him and his flock from behind the security desk. The boy, whose father manned the desk in his white uniform, stared sullenly at all the passing visitors, but did not leave his seat on a high stool until he spotted Reid, Jack, and Henry. He followed them as they circled the woolly mammoth in the rotunda.

"The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, a species of proboscideans that inhabited northern Eurasia and northern North America for 150,000 years before its extinction at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, along with most other species of megafauna," Reid intoned solemnly.

"Probo...What?" Jack squeezed Reid's hand in urgent inquiry. "I don't understand, Uncle Spenny. What's a probosomething?"

"Proboscidean," Reid explained, "An order of mammals that includes mammoths, mastodons, and their living cousins, the elephants."

"I know all about elephants!" Jack exclaimed, "Daddy read to me about Babar!"

"Yes, Babar!" Reid tried to gesture excitedly, but discovered that both of his arms were occupied with the minimans.

"Babar! Babar! Babar!" Henry giggled as he repeated the name and probed his fingers into Reid's nostrils.

"No touchy nose," Reid guided Henry's fingers away from his proboscis. "Hey Henry, this way, look over here," he bounced the miniman in his arms to divert his attention towards the woolly mammoth. "Did you know that mammoths sprouted new sets of teeth throughout their lives, until they were too old to sprout more sets of teeth and died of starvation when their final set of teeth wore out?"

"They died of starvation? Poor mammoths! Poor mammoths starved to death!" Jack covered his ear with his free hand at the inappropriately morbid remark.

"Yes, Jack," Reid was further excited by the miniman's interest, misinterpreting Jack's horror as a sign to continue.

"Those who died of natural causes starved to death after they lost their teeth," he continued. "The ones who were hunted down, the ones who were food for us humans, were killed by spears thrown from an atlatl after becoming engulfed in mud in the thawing tundra."

"We ate Babar?" Jack asked in shock.

"Yes, we ate the extinct relatives of Babar, and we still do, even to this day," Reid replied. "Well-preserved mammoths are still found in Siberia every summer, and the scientists who dig them up have been known to sample their frozen ten-thousand-year-old flesh. Apparently, mammoth tastes like rotten beef."

"Ewwwwwww!" Jack let go of Reid's hand and covered both his ears.

Reid bent down to console the unhappy miniman.

"What's wrong, Jack? Don't you like mammoth stories?" he asked.

"No!" Jack declared, "I don't like hearing about bad people being mean to Babar!"

"OK, Jack, no more stories about bad people being mean to Babar. Let's talk about dinosaurs instead. T. rex, remember? That's what you wanted to see. Let's go see T. rex!" Reid turned the minimans towards the Dinosaur Hall.

"T. rex!" Henry poked at Reid's nose again.

"No touchy nose!" Reid guided the fingers away. "Let's go see T. rex!" the keeper and the minimans entered the Dinosaur Hall, with the dark-haired ten-year-old boy following a few steps behind.

"Now, Jack, listen up," Reid pointed at the T. rex fossil skeleton on display. "We humans didn't eat T. rex, because when T. rex lumbered the Earth, we humans hadn't been invented yet. We were still little wormy shrew-like creatures, skittering into our holes whenever the lizard king came to rule over his forest."

"We were worms?" Jack asked curiously.

"Uh no, our ancestors were wormy shrew-like creatures," Reid wrinkled his nose and sniffed in a shrew-like manner. "They were teeny-tiny before they evolved to be big like us and other mammals."

"And smart like us?" Jack asked.

"Good job, Jack!" Reid was impressed with the miniman's discernment, "Little wormy shrews evolved to be big and smart like us humans."

"Human," Henry poked his fingers into Reid's ear.

"No touchy ear!" Reid guided the fingers away from his head. "Now, what stories do I know about T. rex?" he thought back to all the tyrannosaur-related articles that he had consumed in the "Journal of Paleontological Morbidity and Mortality".

The dark-haired boy hid behind a glass display case as he watched the man and the two younger boys. He fingered the small sharp knife hidden in one of the pockets of his many-pocketed fishing vest. He peeked around the display case every time the group came within earshot as it circled the T. rex. He listened to the man tell his stories about how T. rex, though feared and revered in our eyes as a superpredator, may have actually been a full-time scavenger, an animal that fed exclusively on prey hunted down by smaller predators that it intimidated with its superior size and strength.

The man's stories fascinated the boy. The man's voice entranced him, feeding a hunger that yearned to be acknowledged. The boy wanted to know more about the tyrannosaurs. He wanted to know everything there was to know about them, and he wanted the man to tell him the stories in his soft melodious voice.

In order to have the man all to himself, the boy would have to get rid of the other two, the two little brats who hung onto the man as if he belonged to them. The man did not belong to the brats. The man belonged to the boy. The boy seethed with jealousy at the sight of the man holding the smaller brat, bodily, in one arm, while holding the hand of the larger brat. The boy wanted to rip the smaller brat out of the man's arm and bash his head against the T. rex until his brains splattered all over the fossilized bones. He wanted to lure the larger brat to the second floor of the museum, where he would push him over the railing, waving and yipping as the brat crashed down upon the woolly mammoth below. The brat would bounce off the display and smack his head open against the marble floor. The boy couldn't wait to see it happen. Afterwards, when the brats had been gotten rid of, the boy would tell Daddy that the man had seen Daddy and Daddy's friends smuggling away precious fossils in the dead of night, and Daddy, fearing that the man would tell the police, would help the boy net the man to keep him silent. From then on, the boy and the man would become the best of friends, and they would spend their days and nights together, the man telling his stories and the boy absorbing them like a lowly sponge yearning to evolve into an enlightened human.

The boy sat down on a bench in a dark corner, where he observed the man and the brats conversing over the stegosaur. From the looks of it, the group was planning to spend the whole day at the museum. The boy was pleased. At closing time, he would find a way to trick the group into the restroom. He would lock them in with his master key. If he were lucky, he would find a way to separate the man and the brats. The brats would meet their ends, quietly, without the fanfare of splattering their brains over fossilized bones or marble floors. The man would meet a new beginning.

The boy wondered what he would name the man. He considered naming the man after himself, but he decided against it, not wanting to indulge in such narcissistic behavior. Narcissicism was a condition that he had read about in a book, one of the many books that he read each day, and he did not wish to be associated with it. He decided to name the man after his father. He had read, in another book, that it was right to honor thy father and thy mother. He would call the man "Billy" for short.

* * *

Oh dear, Reid cannot even go to the museum without acquiring "normal" fans.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

At 5:00 PM, the museum closed. Visitors filtered out past the woolly mammoth in the rotunda. Storekeepers locked down their wares for the night. Workers at the IMAX Theater and the Atrium Cafe exited the building through the back door. Security guards did a sweep of the premises before commencing their extracurricular activities.

During the process, as the museum exhaled its bustling crowds and settled in for a good night's sleep, the dark-haired ten-year-old boy fiddled with a taser. He had been lucky to find the device within a drawer of the security desk. Otherwise, he might have needed to use his personal charms to net his prey. Predators, as he saw himself at the moment, were far better suited to an application of brute force.

The boy dallied in the wide passage between the rotunda and the Ocean Hall. He watched the man and the brats enter the men's restroom under the stairs. The smaller brat was bawling, most likely pleading to be changed out of a dirty diaper. The boy felt no sympathy for the brat. He was the youngest in his family, with two older brothers and an older sister, and he was not used to the presence of children younger than himself.

The boy waited outside, until he was certain that all the people who had gone into the restroom had also come out of the restroom, with the exception of the man and the brats. At 5:05 PM, the museum was nearly empty. The boy was not at all surprised that it had taken only a few minutes for the visitors to exit the building. It was a routine that he had observed everyday, ad nauseum, since he had started hanging around the museum with his father after school and on weekends.

At 5:10 PM, the boy was certain that all the visitors had left through the National Mall entrance. That left only the employees to leave through the Constitution Avenue entrance. He was glad that most of the employees worked on the ground floor below. He didn't want to have to tase anyone other than the man and the brats.

The boy peeked into the restroom, watching the man secure the smaller brat into a stroller. For awhile, around lunchtime, the boy had been afraid that the man and the brats were leaving early, when they had exited the museum towards the street. He had followed them out to the man's car, where the man had retrieved a stroller for the smaller brat. The man had secured the brat into the stroller, just as he was now doing, and they had all re-entered the museum to have lunch at the Atrium Cafe. The boy remembered that he had gone through a roller-coaster of emotions during the whole mundane sequence. First, he had felt his stomach drop in fear, thinking that the man was passing out of his life forever. Then, he had swallowed a lump in his throat, trying to accept the bitter disappointment. When, to his surprise, the man had returned to the museum, the boy had felt his heart leap. He had never been so happy before. It was as though he were a convicted death row inmate who had gotten a stay of execution just before the needle had pierced the skin. It strengthened his resolve to live his life to the fullest. He was more determined than ever to net his prey.

Before the man had finished adjusting the stroller, the boy sidled up behind him, edging his way past the stalls, avoiding the gaze of the larger brat, until he was within taser range of the man. He fired the taser and missed, the electrodes landing on the floor beyond the stroller. The boy, who was usually a good shot, realized that the heat of the moment had thrown him off. He switched to his backup plan. In his backup plan, he used the taser as a stun gun, applying the electrodes directly to the man's forearm, exposed now that the man had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

The man doubled over, closing his eyes, grabbing his arm, and dropping to the floor in a fit of neuromuscular incapacitation. The boy stared for a moment at the curious phenomenon, a combination of pain and loss of control, before he whipped around to deal with the brats. He was shocked to discover that the brats were nowhere to be found. Apparently, the larger brat had sensed danger, grabbed the stroller, and escaped the restroom with the smaller brat in tow. The boy wondered why the larger brat had not called out to the man. He had no way of knowing that it was the brat's father who had taught the brat to keep silent and stay hidden during times of peril. He was not used to learning things from his father.

The boy reconsidered his plans as the man recovered on the floor. It took the boy no time at all to adjust his thinking. He was practical. He was malleable. He decided that he wasn't going to waste his time and energy chasing down the brats in the museum. Every second he wasted on that endeavor was a second lost from the company of the man. Luck had gotten rid of the brats for him. Luck was on his side.

"Jack! Henry!" the man stumbled to his feet in a flurry of gangling limbs and agitated ganglions.

"He went that way!" the boy pointed out the door.

"Which way?" the man yelled.

"The bad man ran out the door after he used that thing on you!" the boy pointed at the floor.

The man looked down, breathing rapidly and panicking, at the taser that had skittered under the sink. The boy observed the man's face. He counted on the man to believe him. The man had not seen the attacker. He had been too busy with his bodily dysfunctions to take note of his surroundings. The man, with a sweet face and kind eyes, would surely believe an innocent little child like him.

"Stay with me," the man exited the restroom, "There's no need to be afraid," he held the boy's hand and led him towards the rotunda. "We'll get the security guards to help us," he looked every which way without seeing the brats. "They'll help me find Jack and Henry," he tried to calm himself, "I'll be able to find Jack and Henry in no time," he tried to convince himself.

"I can't find my Daddy either," the boy scrunched up his face and cried. "One minute he was there, and the next minute, he was gone. I was looking for him in the restroom, but the bad man came in and attacked you. I thought he was going to shoot me with that thing too!"

"It's OK," the man bent down to soothe the traumatized child, "Why don't you tell me your name, and we can go to the security desk together? The security guards will help us. They'll help me find my kids, and they'll help you find your dad."

"I'm Jason," the boy wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve, sniffling for effect, but not going so far as to blow his nose on his shirt.

"I'm Spencer," the man said, "Don't worry, Jason, I'm going to help you. Nothing bad is going to happen to you as long as I'm around. The bad man is far more likely to come after me instead," he mumbled to himself, still looking every which way for the brats.

"Can I call you Billy?" Jason asked.

"Sure," the man replied distractedly, "You can call me whatever you want, Jason," his face fell as he spotted the empty security desk. "I wonder where all the security guards went."

"Maybe they're doing a sweep of the building to make sure that all the visitors have left?" Jason suggested.

"Good thinking, Jason," the man picked up the phone on the security desk. "Why doesn't this thing work?" the man held the phone to his ear, "There's no dial tone. Where's my cell phone?" he searched his pockets, "Oh, it's my jacket that I hung on the stroller," he sighed.

The boy hung tightly onto the man's hand, enjoying the man's company now that he had the man all to himself. He hung onto the man's words even more tightly. "Good thinking," the man had praised him. "Jason," the man had addressed him by name. The boy could tell that he and the man were going to be great friends.

"Jason," the boy felt a surge of excitement as the man addressed him again, "I'm going to look for the security guards. There's a bad man running around the museum, so I want you to stay with me and bear with me, alright? We'll go to the Dinosaur Hall first, then make our way over to the Fossil Mammals and the Ice Age. Maybe Jack and Henry went to see the dinosaurs. We did come here to see T. rex. Maybe we'll find your dad on the way. Are you up for it, Jason?"

"Yeah, Billy," Jason nodded, "Can I hold your hand?" he sniffled again.

"Of course," the man offered his hand, "Let's head this way," he pointed towards the Dinosaur Hall.

The boy followed the man into the Dinosaur Hall, gazing up at the great height of the man from his child-sized perspective. He imagined the museum full of visitors, he and the man among them, gawking in wonder at the ancient fossil skeletons. He imagined that he had come here with the man, just like the brats had come here with man this morning. He imagined that he lived with the man in a small house in the suburbs, that the man took him to school every morning and picked him up every afternoon, that the man made dinner while he did his homework, that the man told him stories in the evening and tucked him in at night. The simple fantasies filled him with an indescribable joy. He wanted nothing more than to bring them to life.

"Shhhhhhh," Reid shushed the silent boy, "In here..." he ducked into an alcove and pulled the boy in after him.

From the alcove, Reid watched in disbelieving fascination as a trio of uniformed security guards unlocked a glass display case and gingerly lifted out a delicate raptor skeleton. It was Eoraptor, one of the earliest known dinosaurs from the Triassic Period, a small theropod that resembled the common ancestor of all the dinosaurs. One of the guards wheeled up a cart containing an identical, but fake, skeleton, and the two others grasped it by the ribcage, lifted it out of the cart, and secured it into the display case. Into the cart went the genuine article, which the group wheeled out of the Dinosaur Hall, towards the elevator, the ground floor, and the loading dock. Reid had no doubt that the 220-million-year-old fossil was headed out of the museum, on its way to earn wads of cash for the corrupt security guards.

"The bad man!" Jason whispered, "He was the one pushing with the cart!" he lied easily.

"The bad man was one of the fossil smugglers?" Reid asked.

He frowned in confusion, wondering why the smuggler would take the time to tase an unobservant bystander before going on his merry thieving way. Furthermore, he wondered how many security guards were involved in the fossil-smuggling ring and whether it was safe for him to approach any of them. He decided not to approach the security guards. He would stay out of their way. There was no telling how dangerous they were, if they were willing to attack random strangers in the restroom. He couldn't afford to take any risks, not with Jack and Henry missing, not with a new child under his care.

Reid closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and pushed away an overwhelming wave of panic, followed by an overwhelming sense of guilt. He imagined himself telling Hotch and JJ that he had misplaced their children at the museum. He imagined their accusing faces and frustrated sighs. He imagined Hotch yelling at him, JJ crying, Will comforting her while staring at him with daggers in his eyes. He pushed the images away and launched his brain into its problem-solving mode. He was a profiler who knew his targets. He knew that Jack must have pushed Henry away in the stroller. He knew that Jack must have taken Henry into hiding, somewhere in a tiny dark corner of the museum, preferably within a box, where bad men were not likely to find them. He took comfort in his knowledge - of the children, who were no longer minimans but fully realized humans, and of the museum itself.

The museum was a limited space with a topography that he had known since he had first visited here more than twenty years ago. In the summer of 1985, William, Diana, and Spencer had visited Washington, DC on a family vacation. The proud glowing parents had whirled their bright exuberant child through all the museums lining the National Mall. At the time, Spencer had only been three, so all he remembered from that trip were the layouts of the museums and the stories his father had told him.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Reid wished that he had a weapon. He desperately missed his trusty revolver in its mispositioned holster on his belt. Here he was, trapped inside the deserted museum, surrounded by corrupt security guards, possessing none of wallet, cell phone, or minimans, with only his wits to protect himself and his new charge. His wits would have to be enough.

"Hey Jason," Reid addressed the boy, "Let's go check the restroom. The bad man dropped the taser on the floor. It should still be there."

"OK," the boy nodded, "And then we'll go look for my Daddy?"

"Yeah," Reid replied, "We'll look for your dad and my kids. We'll be really quiet when we're walking around, just in case the bad guys come back."

The boy nodded and gave the man a thumbs-up. The man poked his head out of the alcove in the Dinosaur Hall. He clutched the boy's hand in his own, giving it a confident squeeze of reassurance. The two of them padded softly past the ancient fossils.

At the exit into the rotunda, Reid peeked around the corner, sweeping the large domed space with his eyes for any sign of movement. Seeing none, he turned the corner to his right, dashed past the entrance to the Ancient Seas, and halted in the area under the stairs. He felt safer in the half-enclosed space near the restrooms. He looked down at the boy.

"Hey Jason, do you have any change on you?" Reid asked. "We can use the pay phones if you've got quarters..." he stopped as the boy shook his head. "It's OK. We'll just check the restroom then. Make sure to stay behind me, just in case the bad guys are inside."

The boy nodded and positioned himself directly behind the man. The man pushed open the restroom door, poked his head in, and checked for gross objects, gross movements, fine objects, and fine movements. Seeing none, he stepped inside, the boy following directly behind him. There was no one in the restroom and no taser on the floor.

In his pocket, the boy fiddled with the taser. He had no plans to use it, now that he had the man all to himself, but it was nice to have it, just in case.

"Damn it!" Reid cursed uncharacteristically. "I should've grabbed the taser while it was still here! No weapon, no Jack, no Henry! Only stupid dumb idiotic you!" he referred to himself.

"I'm here, Billy," the boy said timidly.

Sensing that the man was distressed, the boy attempted to offer a modicum of comfort. At first, when he had initially spotted the man and the brats, the boy had only been concerned with his own needs. Now, he was starting to be drawn up into the needs of the man. He considered giving up the taser, but he calculated against it. While the relationship was new and fragile, the boy was afraid to taint his image in the eyes of the man. The eyes of the man and how they looked at him were the only things that the boy cared about.

"I know, Jason," Reid said, "I'm glad you're here. If only Jack and Henry were here too...Then we'd all have a great time together," he sighed softly, his face full of anxiety over the fate of the minimans.

He ran through all the possible scenarios in scenario-space. He shuddered at the disturbing scenarios that came to mind. He suddenly wished that he had not stored so many images of dead children in his nearly infallible memory. He looked down at the boy, resolving to hang onto this new miniman. Each miniman was a precious gift to be hung onto for dear life.

Intense anxiety gave way to intense terror. Reid came up with an idea.

Orkin Pest Control was a nationwide company that specialized in eliminating arthropods from the home. Having spent half a century killing man's many-legged frenemies, the exterminator had begun to feel guilty. That was why the company had funded the creation of the O. Orkin Insect Zoo at the National Museum of Natural History. The exhibit housed more than 300 live insects. Reid needed a weapon.

From a corner of the restroom, he grabbed a large cardboard box. He dumped out several rolls of toilet paper to make room for three small boxes that he stuffed into the large box. He checked the heights of the cardboard sides, hoping that they would be tall enough to contain their future inhabitants. Even with his vast stores of entomological knowledge, Reid wasn't sure what would happen when a Madagascar hissing cockroach, an emperor scorpion, and a Goliath bird-eating tarantula ended up in the same habitat. The boxes formed a poor habitat, but he would have to make do. He desperately needed a weapon.

"Jason, let's go upstairs," Reid whispered to the boy. "Let's go make some new friends upstairs. Do you like bugs? Have you ever been to the Insect Zoo?"

"Yeah!" Jason answered brightly, "The Insect Zoo is super coooooool! It's got..."

"Shhhhhhh," Reid held his finger over his lips, "Let's be extra quiet on our way up there, OK? We don't want the bad guys to see us or hear us."

The boy nodded and zipped up his lips. He smiled a charming smile with his mouth closed. He followed, and would follow, wherever the man led.

The man and the boy climbed the stairs to the second floor. From the balcony, they rushed into the Hall of Bones, seeking cover amongst the dimly-lit exhibits. The Hall of Bones was full of vertebrate skeletons from extant organisms. Reid didn't think that the smugglers would be interested in such common specimens when they had ancient fossils to pick and choose from on the first floor. On the second floor, the only thing that the smugglers would be interested in was the Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals. Reid vowed to stay away from that area.

The man and the boy fled through the Hall of Bones, past the Reptile Exhibit, and into the Insect Zoo. Reid was sure that the smugglers would not be interested in bugs, live or dead.

In the Insect Zoo, he zeroed in upon the door leading to the area behind the exhibits. He grabbed his keychain out of his pocket, thanking his lucky stars that he still had it on him. He carried the pick and wrench of a lock-picking kit on his keychain. It took him only a couple of minutes to pick the lock.

The boy watched the man in silent fascination. He admired the man's skill. The man was not just a teller of stories. He was also a doer of deeds.

The doorknob turned with a satisfying click. The man and the boy entered the dark narrow room. Reid was relieved to discover that the area behind the Insect Zoo was not a den of thieves. He hadn't expected that it would be, based on his geographical profile of the museum. The smugglers were far more likely to hole up in a warm comfortable hideout devoid of creepy-crawlies. They were probably drinking coffee and counting bills in the employee lounge.

Reid relaxed in the safety of the confined space. He turned to the insects in their fancy miniature habitats.

The exhibit nearest the door held the Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Within the habitat, there were at least twenty of the reddish brown segmented insects crawling around on small rotten logs. Each cockroach was three to four inches long, with classic roach legs and classic roach antennae, but lacking the wings that covered the segments of most species of cockroaches. Without the wings, the segments were exposed, so the Madagascar hissing cockroach appeared slightly less disgusting and slightly more workmanlike than others of their order. In addition, their ability to hiss through their breathing pores, the equivalent of human noses, elevated the Madagascar hissing cockroach above other hissing insects, which could only hiss by rubbing their external body parts together. Reid found them quite lovable.

"What do you think, Jason?" the man consulted the boy.

"Coooooool!" the boy nudged up against the plexiglas at the back of the habitat. "Are we going to collect some of these? Are we going to use them on the bad guys? I wanna see them eat the bad guys alive!"

"Yeah, Jason," Reid opened a door halfway up the plexiglas. "But we're only going to defend ourselves against the bad guys. We're not going to use these unless it's absolutely necessary. Here, roachie, roachie, roachie..." he tried to entice one of the roaches into a box.

The roach, as attracted to the man as the boy had been earlier, tried to climb up the side of the plexiglas. The roach, usually an excellent climber, was thwarted by the petroleum jelly that its caretakers had applied to the plexiglas to prevent it from escaping the habitat. Reid considered plucking the roach up by the legs, but he didn't know if such a violent action would harm the innocent insect. Jason came to the rescue with a metal scoop. The roach crawled into the scoop. It wiggled its antennae at the humans. It relished the ride from one habitat to another. Somewhere within its simple insectoid nervous system, it experienced an intense surge of joy.

Using the same method, Reid scooped up a baker's dozen of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. The roaches hissed together in the box. Madagascar hissing cockroaches possessed a repertoire of three different hisses - the disturbance hiss, the fighting hiss, and the female-attracting hiss. At the moment, all the roaches hissed with the same timbre. Reid wondered which hiss they were employing. He hoped that it was not the female-attracting hiss. That wasn't going to get them anywhere with him.

"Wow!" the boy exclaimed as he played with the roaches. "Check it out! They're nibbling on my fingers! I think they like me!"

Reid checked it out, "They do like you!" he declared, "Who do you want to play with next, Jason?"

"The scorpion! Definitely the scorpion!" the boy pointed at the next habitat.

"Good thinking, Jason," Reid said. "There's a whole family of emperor scorpions here, but it looks like we can only fit one in the box. Did you know that scorpions are actually arachnids rather than insects? Arachnida and Insecta are both classes, which fall under phylum Arthropoda in modern taxonomy. Did you know that the emperor scorpion is one of the largest species of scorpion in the world? It may look sinister with its shiny black exoskeleton, but it's really quite harmless to humans. Its venom is not very toxic. Did you know that the exoskeleton fluoresces under UV light? It glows a beautiful seafoam green!"

"Whoa, does it really glow?" Jason widened his sparkling blue eyes, "I never knew that insects could glow! Oops...I mean...I never knew that arachnids could glow!"

The boy whipped his head back and forth, looking from the scorpion to the man and back to the scorpion again. He was so bursting with excitement that he didn't know where to look. The man was telling him stories, ones that were meant for his ears alone. He didn't have to share them with anyone. It made him feel so special.

"Here, scorpie, scorpie, scorpie..." Reid tried to entice a nine-inch-long scorpion into a box.

The scorpion, sensing a chance to escape, stood up against the plexiglas. With amazing strength, it lunged over the door and plopped into the waiting receptacle. Reid supported the box from the bottom, taking care not to extend his fingers over the side. The venom of the emperor scorpion was not very toxic, but the bite was still very painful.

Somewhere within the scorpion's arachnid consciousness, it experienced a warm fuzzy feeling. It was happy to be free of its boring habitat and its annoying relatives. It was somewhat disillusioned with its life in the Insect Zoo. Twelve months ago, it had gotten knocked up after a whirlwind romance with one of its brothers. Afterwards, the brother had turned his attention to another sister, and the pregnant scorpion had felt unattractive and unloved. Now, it was happy to join the larger world of its new caretakers. It looked forward to a new beginning for itself and its soon-to-be-hatched scorplings.

Reid set the scorpion box as far away as possible from the cockroach box. As a safety precaution, he applied petroleum jelly to the inside and outside walls of the cockroach box. It was for their own good. In the wild, cockroaches were a staple in the diet of scorpions.

Confident in the separation of the insects and the arachnids, Reid turned to the Goliath bird-eating tarantula.

The Goliath bird-eating tarantula was a horrifyingly large spider. It had a leg span of twelve inches, second only to the giant huntsman spider, which, although larger in diameter, was no match in terms of mass or hairiness. Nor did the giant huntsman spider eat birds, bats, rodents, lizards, or venomous snakes for breakfast.

The spider stared at Reid with its terrifying eyes. Reid didn't relish the thought of touching the tarantula. He almost allowed the boy to pluck the spider out of its habitat, but waved him away at the very last second, when he recalled that the tarantula possessed sharp one-inch-long fangs that could easily break the skin of a human, much less a miniman. It also possessed urticulating hairs that it could shoot out of its body whenever it sensed danger. The hairs could lodge themselves into the skin and eyes of the victim and secrete acrid fluids that caused allergic reactions.

"Jason, can you do something for me?" Reid asked the boy, "Can you go stand over there while I'm playing with the spider?"

The boy hesitated, edged towards the spider habitat, then thought better of it and scurried obediently into the farthest corner of the room. He knew that it was for his own good.

"Here, spidey, spidey, spidey..." Reid held a box over the door of the habitat.

The spider, another of the man's normal fans, crawled eagerly into the box. It wished that it could see the man more clearly, but it belonged to a species of spider that had very poor eyesight, so it had to make do with the vibrations of the man's hands as the man shifted the box beneath it. The vibrations awakened a feeling that had lain dormant for years. The spider had not felt so titillated since it had reached sexual maturity at the age of four, mated with its first love, and murdered said love several days later, according to the custom of the Goliath bird-eating tarantula.

"What should we name it?" Jason asked from the corner.

"Deus ex machina," Reid replied, "God from the machine."

"Are we going to use it as a last resort?" Jason caught onto the implications of the name.

"You bet!" Reid grinned in a manner that would have tricked a stranger into believing that he was eager to deploy the overgrown tarantula.

He placed the spider box between the scorpion box and the cockroach box. As another safety precaution, he shifted the spider box closer to the scorpion box. Cockroaches were also a staple in the diet of tarantulas.

For good measure, Reid opened up the final habitat and plucked out several of the largest greenest mantises within. He plopped the mantises into the interstitial space between the three small boxes. He grabbed a spray bottle from the table behind the habitat. The bottle was labeled "Reproductive Pheromones". Based on his knowledge of mantises and their mating habits, Reid determined that the spray bottle could be put to good use.

"Come on," Reid waved Jason over from the corner, "Let's go look for your dad and my kids."

The boy rushed over, planting himself at the side of the man. He fancied himself as the righthand man of his much-admired father figure. He felt only the tiniest tinge of jealousy at the mention of the other children.

"OK, Jason," Reid maneuvered the box into position under his left arm, "Here's the plan. I'm thinking that Jack and Henry are hiding out in a little cubbyhole or cabinet somewhere in the museum. That's why we're going to take a tour of the museum and try every door that we come across. This way, you can look for your dad at the same time that I look for my kids. If we come across any of those bad guys..." he glanced significantly at the creepy-crawly box of horrors. "What do you think, Jason? Are you with me?"

"I'm with you, Billy!" the boy low-fived the man.

"Alright, first stop, the Fossil Cafe," Reid indicated the small restaurant on the first floor.

He suspected that the minimans were hiding out on the first floor. Jack had pushed Henry away in the stroller, and Reid didn't think that Jack would have taken the elevator to the second floor or the basement. He decided to start his search on the first floor, going from the Dinosaur Hall to the Fossil Mammals to the Ice Age, with a special emphasis on the Fossil Cafe. The Fossil Cafe contained many cubbyholes and cabinets under the counters.

The man and the boy retraced their path out of the O. Orkin Insect Zoo. They paused at the second floor railing to examine the rotunda below. There was no one patrolling the rotunda or manning the security desk. The security guards were still busy with their extracurricular activities.

Reid turned towards the set of stairs closest to the Hall of Bones. Across the railing, he could see into the Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals. He could see the Hope Diamond in its special room at the center of the hall. He could see movement near the Hope Diamond. It was a security guard, peering intently at the deep blue gem in its glass display case.

Reid attempted to suppress his primal urges. He was furious. He was livid. He was sick with anger that the short fat balding ignoramus on the other side of the railing dared appraise the beautiful miraculous work of nature and man combined. He was sure that the security guard was leering at the diamond with dollar signs spinning in his beady eyes. The thought made him nauseous. He lost control of himself. He had no choice but to deploy the cockroaches.

"Hey Jason, I've gotta do something over there," Reid pointed across the railing, "But I'm going to be back real soon. Can you hide out here for a few minutes?" he indicated a narrow alcove between the stairs and the museum store.

"No! I don't wanna stay here alone!" Jason protested. "I'm scared to stay here by myself! I wanna come with you! Are you going to use the cockroaches on that bad man? I can help! I wanna help!" he insisted with earnest eyes and quivering lips.

"OK, OK," Reid whispered, "Shhhhhhh! You can come with me, but remember to stay behind me at all times and to be really really really quiet. That man could be dangerous. He doesn't seem to have a gun," he squinted across the railing, "But what if he has a taser? Believe me when I say that those things don't feel good at all!"

The boy nodded and positioned himself directly behind the man. He was thrilled. He was completely caught up in the adventures of the evening. In his pocket, he fiddled with the taser. He knew what he would do with it. If things got out of hand, he would use it to defend his friend.

Reid edged furtively towards the Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals. At the entrance, he flattened himself against the wall and glanced sideways into the Hope Diamond Exhibit. The security guard was still there, leering lasciviously at the glittering gem.

Reid set the large box on the floor and lifted out the cockroach box. The cockroaches hissed softly, as if they understood that their master required stealth for his operations.

Reid stuck his hand into the box. He allowed the largest cockroach to crawl into his palm. Once the roach was secure, he extended his arm over the floor in the direction of the security guard. The roach hopped off his hand, skittered across the marble, and crawled up the pant leg of the security guard. As the leader of its pack, it was followed by all the other roaches, who, being excellent climbers, quickly carved out a niche for themselves within the pant legs of the security guard. Madagascar hissing cockroaches were omnivores, which meant that they ate vegetables most of the time but could hardly resist a juicy cut of steak, when offered.

The security guard scratched at his legs. He froze as he discovered something horribly amiss within his pants. He scratched harder, rolling up his pants to flick away the insects that covered his pale hairy legs. The sight of the cockroaches sent him into a frenzied panic. He dropped to his knees and keeled over onto the floor. He grimaced and screamed and flailed. He spun in circles over the cold marble surface. He clutched at the stand bearing the Hope Diamond. His face turned scarlet. He sweated like a pig. The cockroaches hissed loudly within his pants, climbing ever higher in their newest habitat.

"Sssssss! Sssssss!" the cockroaches hissed.

"Augh! Augh!" the man screamed.

"Sssssss! Sssssss!" the cockroaches hissed.

"Augh! Augh!" the man screamed.

Reid watched the scene unfold before him. He pegged the sound of the cockroaches as the fighting hiss. He found it curious that instead of attempting to solve the problem of the roaches, the security guard would choose to scream and flail on the floor.

After several minutes, Reid took mercy upon the security guard. He decided to put a stop to the disturbance. He didn't want the noise to attract the attention of the other security guards. He approached the writhing man.

"Did you think that you were going to get away with it?" Reid grabbed the man by the arms and pulled him into the nearby restroom, as a tarantula would pull its prey into its hole. "What were you planning to do with the Hope Diamond once you got your dirty little paws on it?" he snatched a pair of handcuffs off the man's belt. "Were you planning to sell it whole or piece by piece?" he handcuffed the man to a pipe along the wall. "Were you aware that the Hope Diamond came with a curse? It's brought nothing but death and misery to all its owners! Did you know that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded because of it? Did you know that it drove some of its jewelers stark raving mad? Were you hoping that you'd have better luck with it?"

"Who...Who...Who are you?" the security guard blubbered with tears rolling down his ruddy cheeks.

"Here, roachie, roachie, roachie..." Reid ignored the man, preferring to address the cockroaches as he enticed them out of the man's pants and back into the box.

He checked the man's belt for a weapon or a cell phone. He found only a transceiver, which he pocketed to prevent the man from radioing his colleagues for help.

"You can call me Deus ex machina," he smiled as he unleashed the tarantula.

The spider, finding the security guard absolutely abhorrent in comparison to its beloved master, bit a chunk out of the man's chin as the man twisted and turned to shake it off his face. Finding the man's flesh greasy and vile, the spider urticulated several of its long sharp hairs into the man's cheeks. The man's cheeks swelled up immediately, lending him an even ruddier piggier appearance than before. Reid tried not to enjoy himself too much. He was slightly annoyed that he had slipped up and released the spider. Deus ex machina was supposed to be saved for dire situations, not applied willy-nilly as a form of vigilante justice.

"See you later," Reid slapped the security guard on the shoulder as he enticed the spider back into its box. "I hope you've learned your lesson," he hissed contemptuously at the helpless blubbering man. "This should teach you to stop stealing national treasures," he exited the restroom without a backwards glance.

Outside, Reid re-arranged the boxes and counted the arthropods. There were still thirteen cockroaches, one scorpion, one tarantula, and five mantises. He maneuvered the box back into position under his left arm. He sighed happily and offered the boy his right hand. For the first time in his life, Reid felt like an alpha male. He marveled that all it had taken was a legion of arthropods.

The man and the boy walked boldly down the stairs to the first floor. The man was eager to begin the search. The boy was eager to follow the man. In the man's mind, confidence had replaced anxiety. In the boy's mind, contentment had replaced anger. Both minds were at peace, and neither was afraid.

Tasers were no match for arthropods. The creations of man were no match for the creations of nature.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

From the rotunda, Reid squinted at a group of security guards gathered just inside the entrance to the Hall of Mammals. He crouched down with the boy beside him, both of them seeking cover behind the woolly mammoth as their eyes followed the movements of the guards. Reid wondered what the smugglers wanted with the stuffed animals.

Among all the exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History, the stuffed animals were Reid's favorite. The stuffed animals were taxidermied specimens of mammals, common and rare, posed in natural postures - the lioness attacking the wildebeest, the panther on the prowl, the leopard lazing over the tree branch. The felines were the fiercest, but the giraffe, with its longs legs splayed out and its long neck stretched out as it drank from a watering hole, was the specimen that most illustrated the extremes to which nature would go in its quest to thrive. In the wild, the zebra and the antelope took the cue of the giraffe. When the giraffe spotted danger from up high, it fled, and that was the sign for the zebra and the antelope to flee as well.

The security guards, the same three who had stolen the Eoraptor fossil, wheeled a cart through the Hall of Mammals towards the Hall of Human Origins. Reid followed, finding himself drawn, against his will, to the illicit, but fascinating, activities. He didn't need his gut to tell him that another act of grand theft/larceny was about to take place.

At the entrance to the Hall of Human Origins, Reid paused, considering his options. The wise choice was to flee the area and continue his search for Jack and Henry among the exhibits on the opposite side of the rotunda. The other choice was to attack the security guards with the arthropods, until the despicable specimens of basest humanity were reduced to writhing wriggling masses of living de-evolution. The choice was no choice at all. It was a prerogative.

Just like they had done when they had stolen the Eoraptor fossil, the security guards unlocked a glass display case and lifted out the priceless fossil within. The fossil was a hominid skull, brown and cracked with age, smaller than any human skull had any right to be. It was an Australopithecus skull, from a bipedal hominid species that had appeared in eastern Africa more than 4 million years ago. The genus Australopithecus had radiated into both gracile and robust species before its extinction 2 million years ago. One of those robust species had spawned the genus Homo, which included Homo sapiens sapiens, Man wise wise, although not every specimen of the species fit the nominal description. As the security guards replaced the real deal with a nearly identical replica, Reid experienced an irrepressible urge to extract their skulls from their bodies and stick their giant empty brain casings into glass display cases for public ridicule.

Before he could act upon his murderous intentions, Reid felt a tugging at his sleeve. Looking down, he found Jason pointing at the creepy-crawly box of horrors under his arm. He checked the arthropods. To his relief, there were still thirteen cockroaches, one scorpion, one tarantula, and five mantises. The pregnant scorpion had not yet hatched its scorplings, nor had the scorpion or the tarantula consumed any of the cockroaches, nor had any of the mantises consumed any of the other mantises. The ecosystem was intact.

"I've got an idea," Jason whispered, pulling Reid away from the wide arched doorway. "There's three of them this time, so we have to be extra careful. Let's wait for one of the bad guys to wander away from the others. When he's alone, we can sic the scorpion on him. The scorpion hasn't seen any action yet. I think it's getting restless," he pointed at the scorpion box, where the ebony arachnid curled and uncurled its tail in preparation for the birth of its scorplings.

"Good idea, Jason," Reid nodded in approval. "Divide and conquer, a proven military tactic for engaging large enemy forces, an algorithmic approach in computer science to...Never mind," he stopped himself.

"What? An algorithmic approach to...what?" Jason asked.

"I'll tell you all about it later," Reid replied.

"Promise?" Jason asked.

"Promise," Reid replied. "Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye."

Jason nodded solemnly in acceptance of the promise. He plucked the scorpion out of its box and let the creature crawl up his forearm. Together, the man and the boy peeked around the corner into the Hall of Human Origins. To their delight, two of the security guards had disappeared out of sight, leaving only the tall gangly one to gaze at a wall of hominid skulls arranged into the human evolutionary tree. The enemy target scratched his head like a chimpanzee as he mouthed out the Latin names on the placards.

"Let's get him," Reid whispered to Jason.

Jason stooped down to the floor and unleashed the scorpion. The scorpion wavered, uncertain of its mission until it noticed the security guard across the room. The guard, with his tall gangly stature, reminded the scorpion of someone else, who had ducked out of sight with the express purpose of directing the scorpion towards the guard rather than himself.

At a gentle nudge from the boy, the scorpion skittered over the marble floor. It crawled onto one foot of the security guard, resting briefly before grasping the khaki fabric of the man's pants and pulling itself up the pant leg. The guard did not notice anything horribly amiss until the scorpion reached his thigh, where it stopped, hanging onto the pant leg with one claw while pinching the flesh of a skinny hand with the other. The guard winced, letting out a startled shriek as he grabbed his hand. Being an entomophobe, the sight of the huge scorpion immediately sent him into a fear-induced panic attack. He flung his arm this way and that, trying to shake off the scorpion that had jumped from his leg to his hand. The easiest way to remove the scorpion would have been to pluck it right off its perch, but the guard was so afraid of arthropods that he refused to touch them, not even to remove them from his own body. He was ill-adapted for life in the wild.

After several minutes of arthropod-inflicted torture, Reid, remembering his own anxiety disorders concerning darkness, human females, and human females in the darkness, took pity upon the enemy. Leaving Jason in the Hall of Mammals, Reid strode calmly towards the security guard. With his thumb and index finger, he plucked the scorpion off the man's shoulder, where it had burrowed halfway into the man's shirt. The man fled the scene, covering his mouth and stumbling into a nearby restroom to void himself of his dinner. Reid looked after him for a second, considered following him into the restroom to handcuff him to the pipes, but decided against it when he realized that the sight of the scorpion would send the man into another panic attack. The man had suffered enough. Reid hoped that as a consequence of the experience, the young man would reform himself and swear off thievery of any kind.

He returned to the Hall of Mammals, where Jason greeted him with a low five in one hand and the scorpion box in the other. Into the box went the scorpion, who resumed its earlier activities, curling and uncurling its tail, content to relax in the company of its attentive caretakers after its thrilling rollercoaster ride.

"The rest of them are gone," Reid said. "Let's go find Jack and Henry," he led the boy through the Hall of Human Origins towards its intersection with the Ocean Hall.

As he strolled past the hominid exhibits, Reid reflected on the evolution of the human brain. He wondered if humans, with all their powers of intelligence, were really no different from the other animals. He himself was a clear example. He was one of the smartest of his kind, and yet, he could not resist his basic animal instincts - stalking, hunting, killing, albeit using harmless arthropods. In this time of crisis, while Jack and Henry were missing in the museum, Reid was deeply ashamed of himself for letting his animal instincts subsume his better judgment. He vowed to resist the urges, as soon as he finished employing the arthopods one final time in the Ocean Hall.

In the Ocean Hall, under the replica of the North Atlantic right whale, two corrupt security guards argued over what to steal next. One of them, the short skinny one, wanted to steal the head of Basilosaurus cetoides, a 60-foot long marine reptile that was the oceanic equivalent of Tyrannosaurus rex. The other, the tall hulking one, wanted to steal the humongus jawbone of Carcharodon megalodon, a 70-foot shark that would have given the basilosaur a run for its money had the basilosaur not gone extinct 10 million years before the shark had evolved and 35 million years before the shark had also gone extinct. The guards argued vociferously in the large cavernous space, their voices echoing off the walls, their words scrambled up in the echoes. Reid couldn't make out exactly what they were saying, but from their behavior, he could tell that they were two of the most undeserving of their taxonomic designation. They imagined that they could pilfer two gigantic fossil skeletons without anyone noticing.

"What are we going to do about them?" Jason asked, tilting his head in the direction of the knuckleheads.

"We're going to unleash all our forces," Reid smiled into the box.

The cockroaches, scorpion, tarantula, and mantises gazed up in unison at the smiling man. In his imagination, they saluted, their animal instincts uniting with his own against the odious graverobbers. As usual, the cockroaches volunteered to take point.

Reid set the cockroach box on the floor near the giant squid exhibit. At his signal, Jason tipped the box over, sending the cockroaches on their way up the pant legs of the security guards. From a distance, Reid couldn't tell how the cockroach army had distributed itself between the two enemy targets. He could only see the short skinny guard screaming and flailing while the tall hulking guard watched in horror, indicating that the cockroaches had chosen to divide and conquer the enemy rather than allowing themselves to be divided and conquered by the enemy.

As a reward for their initiative, Reid dispatched auxiliary forces to aid them. He released the mantises, crossing his fingers and toes that the large green gangling creatures would attack the guard instead of the roaches. Mantises were known to devour everything under the sun, including other mantises, even when free from the intoxicating effects of sexual arousal.

The mantises dashed across the floor with astonishing speed. Speed was their main predatory adaptation. In the wild, they latched onto their prey extraordinarily quickly, usually from an ambush position behind the foliage. In the museum, there was nowhere to hide, so the mantises scattered in all directions from their point of origin. Reid, realizing his mistake, tried to lure the mantises back into the box.

"Here, manty, manty, manty..." Reid whispered while circling the mantises.

"Here, manty, manty, manty..." Jason whispered while blocking off their escape routes.

It didn't work. None of the mantises displayed the slightest interest in returning to their habitat. The operation hung at the precipice, until Reid remembered the bottle of reproductive pheromones. He snatched it out of the box, squirted some of the contents at his feet, and watched in satisfaction as the mantises followed the siren song of psychoactive chemicals. Slowly and steathily, Reid squirted a path of pheromones between the giant squid and the large security guard, who had snuck away from his screaming flailing compatriot upon seeing the wingless, but still disgusting, cockroaches. He had snuck away only to meet his own comeuppance at the raptorial forelegs of the mantises.

The mantises attacked with gusto, each of the vividly green females zeroing in on the face of the security guard. Reid darted over, sprayed some reproductive pheromones in the general direction of the guard, darted away, and licked his chops in sadistic pleasure as the females bit chunk after tiny chunk out of the guard's cheeks, mistaking each pimple and zit for the head of a mantis male in their pheromone-induced mating frenzy. During mating, mantis females practiced sexual cannibalism, biting the heads off their dull brown mates to prolong the duration of copulation. Finding no males to copulate with on the face of the security guard, the mantis females practiced their regular predatory behaviors, which included biting the heads off other insects, some of which, being garden pests, were targeted for eradication by human gardeners who acquired mantis egg cases for the express purpose of filling their yards with voracious ambush predators.

After several minutes of team-inflicted torture, Reid decided that it was time for the arthropods to explore their individual identities. He collected the cockroaches and mantises from the prostrate forms of the short skinny and tall hulking guards, respectively. For the short skinny guard, he unleashed Deus Ex Machina, who immediately settled upon the chest of the target to stretch out its long hairy legs. For the tall hulking guard, he unleashed the pregnant scorpion, who immediately settled upon the chest of the target to give live birth to its 15 tiny scorplings.

The scorplings rolled around on the man mountain in a scene that was an inexact facsimile of Lemuel Gulliver's introductory encounter with the Lilliputians. The scorpion clambered to the neck of the man mountain, pinching the man's triple chins with its claws as its scorplings scrambled onto its back. When the scorpion had tasted its fill of the man's subcutaneous adipose stores, it crawled onto the man's face, over his facial features, and through his tangled dreadlocks. From his head, the scorpion leaped nimbly to the floor.

Reid reached out to pick up the scorpion. That was a mistake.

Previously, the scorpion had been enamored with its gallant caretaker. Since giving birth, however, the scorpion had transferred its affections to its scorplings, which it would love and refrain from killing as long as they were tiny, helpless, and unable to fend for themselves. It would only kill them if they continued to mooch off their mother after they had already reached maturity. For now, in the eyes of a new mother, every movement by every object was a threat against the scorplings. That was why, when Reid moved his hand into the visual field of the scorpion, it opened its claws, arched its tail over its back, and stung him in the palm.

The sting, though intensely painful, produced only a small red welt. The venom of the emperor scorpion was low in toxicity, and the scorpion sting would not have produced much in the way of symptoms had it not been for Deus Ex Machina, who, having stretched out its long hairy legs upon one writhing wriggling mass, now desired nothing more than to cuddle up with another writhing wriggling mass of living de-evolution. The tarantula, confused by the odors of mantis reproductive pheromones filling the air, mistook the writhing wriggling mass for an arachnid male. It sank its fangs into the nearby target, hanging on until all its venom had been injected into a pale skinny arm. Fortunately, the venom of the Goliath bird-eating tarantula was low in toxicity. Unfortunately, when the spider venom mixed with the scorpion venom in the bloodstream of the injectee, they reacted to produce a chemical compound that traveled straight to the brain and fell into the welcoming arms of cannabionoid receptors on the cell surfaces of neurons. The cannabinoid receptors happened to be the very same ones that normally bound molecules of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive compound in marijuana.

Reid felt a wave of euphoric calmness sweep over him as the spider-scorpion venom performed its functions. The pain of the scorpion sting evaporated out of his palm. The pain of the spider bite evaporated out of his arm. The nausea, caused by the shock of being stung and bitten in rapid succession, subsided as the compound exhibited its anti-emetic properties. Like all cannabinoid substances, the spider-scorpion venom was truly magical.

Reid gave Jason a goofy grin as the boy approached to retrieve the arachnids. The arachnids, having exhausted both their energy and venom stores, crawled obediently back into their boxes. The man and the boy walked calmly out of the Ocean Hall, leaving the two security guards to huddle together and commisserate over their common traumatic experiences. Reid hoped that the guards would reform themselves and, like the tall gangly guard in the Hall of Human Origins, swear off thievery of any kind.

Out of the Ocean Hall and into a passageway they walked, the boy leading the way while the man strolled through a warm fuzzy high, much like the one that came from eating a large platter of special brownies. Ten feet into the African Cultures exhibit, the man froze, whipped his head around, remembered something, and scurried back in the direction from which he had come. A minute ago, he had spotted a pair of small moving objects out of the corner of his eye. He had spotted them as he had sauntered past the Discovery Room in an arachnid-induced daze. He remembered that the Discovery Room was full of hands-on exhibits for children to play with. Indeed, at this very moment, children played with the exhibits in the Discovery Room. In the doorway, Reid nearly burst into tears at the sight before him - Jack arranging a pile of meteorites on the floor, Henry licking a plastic replica of JJ's favorite pale-clouded yellow butterfly.

"Jack! Henry!" Reid stumbled through the doorway.

"Uncle Spenny!" Jack rushed over with an iron-nickel meteorite in his hand.

"Spenny cry!" Henry toddled over with his butterfly.

Reid hugged Jack, scooped Jack into his arms, hugged Jack again, set Jack down, scooped Henry into his arms, hugged Henry, and dropped to the floor with Henry in his arms. He felt like a new man, granted a reprieve from a gruesome hanging, drawing, and quartering execution at the hands of Hotch, JJ, and Will dressed up in medieval executioner costumes. In his vision, Hotch was the one who hanged him half to death, while JJ was the one who cut him down from the scaffold, so that Will could eviscerate him and burn his entrails in a copper brazier, as he watched, screamed, and hoped for the respite of death. After death, he would go straight to Hell, where Haley, who had fallen out of Heaven to join forces with Satan, would torture him for all eternity by spooling his brain out through his nostrils, re-constituting the sludgey fragments in a tank, and stuffing the mass back into his head through an opening in his skull.

On his new life, Reid swore never to let the minimans out of his sight again, unless it was to let them into the sight of their biological parents. He had never felt so happy before, his happiness 99% attributable to his reunion with the minimans and only 1% attributable to the cannabinoid substance in his brain.

Jason watched from the doorway, peering in at the joyful scene as he fingered the taser in his pocket. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to feel. The scene before him was utterly unfamiliar. He understood none of its pain or joy.

Suddenly, heavy footsteps approached from the direction of the African Cultures. A security guard, the leader of the smuggling ring, appeared in the passage outside the Discovery Room. The guard grabbed the boy roughly by the shoulder. He shoved the boy into the room, so hard that the boy tripped and tumbled over a pile of LEGOs on the floor. The boy skooched backwards into the wall, staring at the man with fear in his eyes.

"You stay here, Boy," the man addressed the boy. "I'll deal with you later, after I finish dealing with him," he drew his government-issued weapon from its holster and pointed it at Reid.

In one swift motion, Reid let go of Jack and Henry, scrambled out of the Discovery Room, and slammed the door shut behind him. He stood with his back against the door, himself the only obstacle between the man and the minimans.

Outside the play room, the keeper faced the man. Inside the play room, the minimans faced the boy. Hours ago, the situations would have been parallel. Now, the situations were orthogonal. Or so Reid hoped. It was not just hope that told him so. It was not even the cannabinoid substance in his brain. It was the profiles - the profile of the boy and the profile of the man.

"Hello Bill," Reid addressed Jason's father, "My name is Spencer."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Inside Dr. Spencer Reid's shy unassuming exterior was a streak of recklessness as pronounced as that inside the heart of any Evel Knievel wannabe. When mixed with anger and cannabinoid substances, the reckless streak threatened to spontaneously combust, taking with it the museum and all the stuffed animals within the alabaster halls. Or, in less flamboyant language, it threatened to disregard the barrel of a gun pointed in its face, just as it had done many times before.

"You must be Jason's father," Reid said. "We've been looking for you all night. Where've you been? What've you been doing?"

"I've been busy," Bill smiled, "As you already know," he laughed loudly, the booming sound echoing off the high ceilings of the museum.

"Yeah," Reid laughed along with him. "You're a pretty smart guy, taking advantage of your position at the museum to steal all the artifacts."

"It's no different from how the artifacts got here in the first place," Bill remarked. "Most of them were stolen from their countries of origin during the 19th and 20th centuries. Legend has it that the Hope Diamond was stolen from the statue of a Hindu goddess in India. The blue gem was the statue's eye, one of two matching eyes. After the eye disappeared, the priests at the temple laid a curse upon all future owners of the diamond, and that's why so many of them have met unfortunate ends."

"Great story," Reid said. "My dad told me that story when I was three, when we visited the museum for the first time. When I got older and read about the Hope Diamond for myself, I was really disappointed to find that it was all a fabrication invented to jack up the price of the diamond during resale. Apparently, prospective owners enjoyed the idea of meeting their unfortunate ends at the facets of the diamond."

"Too bad about the owners, but what about you? What about your unfortunate end?" Bill asked.

"Don't be so theatrical," Reid ignored the threat. "You're not going to shoot me here. It would be too messy. Afterwards, I guess you could claim self-defense, but there's going to be an investigation anyway. My colleagues at the FBI aren't going to let it go so easily. They're going to find out all about your extracurricular activities. There's no way that you're going to get off scot-free."

"You're right," Bill agreed. "That doesn't stop me from shooting you somewhere else."

"True," Reid nodded, as if considering the possibilities. "If you could get me out of the museum, then you could drive me out to the woods and shoot me there. The woods would be an ideal place to dispose of my body. If we hike out to a really secluded spot, then my body might not be found for weeks or months. I'm sure that my colleagues at the FBI will come looking though. You'll have to come up with an elaborate explanation for why I disappeared one night at the museum while you were on duty."

"And I will," Bill answered.

"But what about the ballistics?" Reid asked. "Are you going to shoot me with your government-issued weapon? What if the forensics experts trace the bullets back to your gun and you? It's not going to look good when the guy who disappeared from the museum is found with a bullet from the security guard's gun lodged in his brain."

"There are other ways to get rid of you," Bill said. "Most other ways are more painful than getting shot."

"Sure," Reid concurred. "But none of them are quite as reliable. Take stabbing, for instance. Stabbing isn't a good way to kill someone. Besides the fact that blood spews out all over the place, stabbing is also quite unpleasant for the stabber. Can you imagine plunging a knife into someone's flesh, through their skin and fat and muscle, and twisting the blade around in their organs? As my colleague at the FBI would say, 'Icky Sticky!' And there's always the danger of accidentally stabbing yourself while you're struggling with the victim. That would spread your DNA all over the crime scene. Now, I know that I'm not the strongest guy in the world, but I doubt that you'd be able to overpower me fast enough to stab me in the throat or heart, which is what it would take to stop me from struggling. Anywhere else in the torso or the limbs or even the face, and I'm likely to get up and attack you and try to poke your eye out with your own knife. I've gotta warn you about one thing before we start. I may not look strong, but I have a very high pain tolerance. See, at my job in the FBI, I'm constantly getting tortured, so I've developed a certain metaphysical resistance to physical pain. Knife goes in, knife comes out, bullet flies through, whatever...None of these things is going to stop me in my tracks."

Bill stared speechlessly back at Reid.

"Let's move on from stabbing," Reid continued. "What other way is there to kill me? I guess you could strangle me, or at least you could try. The problem there is that I'm very gangly, and I've got very long arms. It's likely that while you've got your hands wrapped around my throat, I'll be able to get my hands wrapped around your throat. In that scenario, who's strangling who? Are you sure that you won't lose consciousness before I lose consciousness? You've also gotta consider the matter of experience. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that I've had any experience strangling people with my bare hands, but the subject of strangulation is one of my fields of expertise. At work, we're constantly dealing with serial killers who strangle their victims, especially prostitutes, and I'm always trying to diagnose exactly how the victims died. Was it compression of the arteries and veins? Was it occlusion of the trachea? Was it fracture of the cervical spine? I have a lot of knowledge about strangulation. You'd be surprised how little work it takes to strangle a person, only 11 pounds of pressure applied to the throat while holding on for at least 50 seconds. Even I could do it, and I've got the BMI of a stick insect. In this area, knowledge counts more than strength. It would be easier for me to strangle you than for you to strangle me, because I know exactly where to apply the pressure. In my head, I've got the whole procedure optimized. It's like a sport to me. You know how athletes visualize their performances before their competitions? I've visualized strangulation so many times that it's permanently stuck in my brain. It's gotten to unhealthy levels of obsession. I'm almost dying to try it out on someone."

Bill backed away, running into the wall on the other side of the corridor, but keeping his weapon trained on Reid. His hands shook as he held the gun, and his finger, the one over the trigger, twitched involuntarily in time with the involuntary twitching of his face. In a different situation or with a different profile, Reid would have diagnosed the twitching as tardive dyskinesia caused by antipsychotic medications, but in this case, he attributed it to a non-medical cause. He got to the point.

"The point is, Bill," Reid said in a condescending manner, one that some people, but not he, used to speak to minimans. "The point is that you're a coward. I'm a profiler, and that's my profile of you. You're a coward who smuggles fossils out of the museum under cover of darkness. You're not a murderer. You're not brave enough to become one. That's why I'm standing here having this conversation with you. I'm not afraid of you, because I know that you don't have the courage to use your gun, just as I know that you don't have the courage to raise your son."

"Keep my kid out of this!" Bill snarled.

"It's a little too late for that, Bill," Reid said. "Your son, Jason, was the one who tased me in the restroom. Another few notches added to my pain tolerance. He's the reason that I'm here right now. I don't blame him, because he's only a kid. How old is he? 9? 10? A kid like Jason learns his behavior from his parents. In this case, he learns his behavior from his father, the only parent he's got. I don't know where his mother is, but I'm pretty sure that she's not around. Am I right, Bill?"

"She walked out on us when Jason was five," Bill said. "Ran off with her boss when he got an executive position in California."

"Is that when your problems started?" Reid asked. "See, Bill, this is what we call a 'stressor' in the field of criminal profiling. Something happens, something unexpected, and the UnSub responds with a change in behavior, often resulting in an act of violence. Did you respond with an act of violence, Bill? Did you start hitting your son?"

"No! I am not a child abuser!" Bill yelled angrily, his gun wavering in his hand as his facial muscles twitched with higher frequency.

Reid assessed the position of the gun. Paradoxically, the angrier the man got, the lower the gun got. It was the classic response of a coward hiding his cowardice behind a front of false bravado. Reid saw no reason not to continue.

"Don't be so defensive, Bill," Reid put up his hands to reassure the man. "You and your son don't fit the profile of physical or sexual abuse. You may push him around every now and then, but you don't get any pleasure out of it. You and your son fit the profile of emotional abuse. I've seen this profile before. You're the father who became the unwilling caretaker of your son after his mother left. Naturally, you resent his mother for running off with another man, but you resent her even more for leaving you alone with your son. You hadn't counted on raising your son alone. That's why you resent him as well. He's not like any of your other children, your older children by your first wife, who also ran off with another man. He takes after his mother. He's got her looks and personality and smarts, and sometimes you wonder if he's really your son at all. Even more reason to resent him. At the same time, you feel guilty for resenting your son, so you relieve your guilt by taking it out on him. If he's as worthless as you say, then your resentment is justified. You tell him that he's stupid, because he gets bad grades at school. He doesn't apply himself at school, because he doesn't need to apply himself. It's too easy for him. He doesn't turn in his assignments, but he aces every test without studying. By now, he should've skipped a couple of grades, but he hasn't, because you've never taken an interest in his schooling. You've never taken an interest in any area regarding your son. As a parent, you provide physical security, and that's it. Everything else is too much work for you, and you don't want to do it, because you're a coward who acts like a bully. The last time I saw this profile, I was trying to talk a teenaged kid out of killing himself, or killing me, or getting himself killed, or getting me killed, after he had carried out a killing spree against everyone who had bullied him in the past. That included his own father. I was lucky with Owen Savage. I don't know if I'll be so lucky with your son a few years down the line."

Bill stared speechlessly again, his face betraying his guilt. He lowered his gun until the barrel was perpendicular to the floor. He swallowed again and again, recognizing himself in the profile. He holstered his gun, now that his front of false bravado had been dismantled. Bullies, when confronted, always turned into the cowards they really were.

"You and Lou Savage, Owen's father," Reid continued. "The two of you make my father look like 'World's Best Dad'. At least my father had the strength to recognize his own weakness. He was smart enough to walk out and wash his hands of a situation that he couldn't handle. I'm beginning to see a certain wisdom in his behavior. In comparison with Owen Savage, I consider myself lucky. But not in comparison with your son. Jason's still got his whole childhood ahead of him. He's going to be fine without you. I'm relieving you of your parental duties. Isn't that what you've always wanted? The last thing you can do for your son is to open up the doors of the museum, so we can finally go home tonight. It's way past the kids' bedtime."

"Are you...Are you going to call the police?" Bill asked shakily.

"I'm a federal agent," Reid replied. "I _am_ the police. But right now, I need to get home and make my kids dinner and tell them a bedtime story and put them to bed. You can interpret that however you want. I'll call you Monday morning about your parental rights."

"You're crazy," Bill shook his head. "What are you going to do with him? Adopt the kid yourself?"

"I don't know," Reid answered honestly. "All I know is I'm not going to stand by and see your son go down the same path as Owen Savage. I've got a chance to do something about it, so I'm going to do something about it. Go open the doors, Bill."

"Oh, I almost forgot," Reid remembered something. "I should let you know that I've got a friend at the museum, a scientist who works here. He studies birds. I know him through my old mentor Jason Gideon, who came here every year during the Super Bowl to look at the Audubon collection. I'm going to be suggesting that the scientists carry out an audit of the fossils in the museum, and I hope that they find everything in order when they do that. These scientists are really good at telling the difference between real fossils and fake fossils. You can interpret that however you want."

With that, Reid pushed open the door to the Discovery Room and backed inside, leaving the security guard trembling in the corridor. He closed and locked the door behind him, just in case. He turned to the minimans.

The sight that greeted him brought a huge smile to his face. Jack was building a pyramid of meteorites. Henry was licking a figurine of a saber-toothed cat. Jason was studying a poster of Egyptian hieroglyphs, tracing the bird-like symbols with his fingers as he digested their meanings.

Reid plopped down next to Jason on the floor. Attracted to their keeper as mantises to reproductive pheromones, the minimans gathered around and batted their mini-eyelashes. The keeper felt the warm fuzzies melting his soft chocolate center.

"Hey Jason," Reid looked the boy in the eye. "We found your dad."

"I know," Jason nodded, then looked downwards to continue his tracing of the hieroglyphs.

"Do you want to go home with your dad tonight?" Reid asked.

"No," Jason shook his head.

"Do you want to go home with me tonight?" Reid asked.

"Can I?" Jason looked up from the poster.

"Yeah," Reid nodded. "It's time for us to go home."

"Can I stay with you at your house?" Jason asked hopefully. "Like...forever?"

"I don't know, Jason, I honestly don't know," Reid answered. "I've got a job that takes me all over the country, so I don't think that I'll be able to provide physical security for you. That's the first parental duty, but not the foremost. But no matter what happens, Jason, there's only one thing that you need to know tonight. As long as I'm alive, Jason, you're going to have a hard time getting rid of me."

"Why would ever I want to get rid of you?" Jason grinned cheekily. "Uncle Spenny," he looked down shyly.

"Uncle Spenny, I'm hungry!" Jack tugged at Reid's sleeve.

"Spenny cry!" Henry continued to indulge his unhealthy obsessions.

"Let's go home," Reid suggested. "Who wants peas and carrots for dinner?"

"Me, me, me!" Jack raised his hand.

"Peas!" Henry clapped.

"Ewwwwwww," Jason scrunched up his face. "Peas and carrots are gross!"

"Nuh-uh," Jack tugged at Jason's sleeve. "Peas and carrots are totally yummy if you eat them in just the right way. Uncle Spenny's gonna show you how to eat them the right way."

"Really?" Jason stared up at Reid. "There's a right way to eat peas and carrots so they're not gross?"

"Uh...Yeah, I'll show you when we get home," Reid replied, suddenly panic-stricken by the realization that it would not be quite as easy to bullshit a ten-year-old as it was to bullshit five-year-olds and two-year-olds.

He took a moment to yawn and stretch before swooping Henry into his arms and giving Jack his hand. Jack offered Jason his hand, but Jason muttered something about "cooties" and stuffed his hands into his pockets to follow behind. The small flock, the keeper and his growing legion of minimans, exited the Discovery Room. In the corridor outside, Jason retrieved the box of arthropods from the floor. He counted them while Jack salivated with excitement and Henry reached out his fingers. Reid transferred the fingers to his face, so that Henry could poke them into his nostrils and ears instead of grabbing the arthropods to, no doubt, lick. There was no way that the arachnids were going to respond well to being licked, although the cockroaches might deploy the female-attracting hiss and the mantises were sure to go off into another mating frenzy.

Back into their habitats went thirteen cockroaches, one scorpion, fifteen scorplings, one tarantula, and five mantises. Out of the museum went the hominids. On the drive home, Jack and Henry fell asleep in the car, and Reid, as promised, told Jason all about the divide-and-conquer algorithm design paradigm in computer science. For a moment, Reid wondered if his latest actions constituted kidnapping, but the moment passed as quickly as it had come.

* * *

Dr. Spencer Reid was just finishing a 1,000,000-word treatise on the mutually beneficial relationship between hominids and arthropods when the doorbell rang. Originally, he had planned to write a treatise on the subject of parenting, but after his adventures of the previous weekend, he had changed his mind, deciding that he needed to gain more experience in the field. As with stabbing and strangling, Reid was bent upon making parenting one of his fields of expertise.

"What's up, Doc?" the doorbell sounded its default Bugs Bunny ringtone.

Reid saved his document and popped up from his armchair to answer the door. Before he could get there, Jason came running out of the bathroom to throw the door open.

"Jason!" Reid ran after the boy. "What did I tell you about answering the door? No answering the door at my apartment! Only I get to answer the door at my apartment! What if it's an UnSub?"

"But an UnSub would come after you, not me," Jason rationalized. "The probability of an UnSub appearing at the same time that Jack and Henry are scheduled to arrive is exceedingly low, although I suppose that it's not outside the realm of possibility. Statistics require a large sample size of both UnSubs and minimans, so I don't think we can draw any definitive conclusions from this one case."

Reid stood in the open doorway, listening to Jason's reasoning with his facial features frozen into an expression of unabashed glee. Finally, here was a miniman who was receptive to brainwashing. Nay, who was willing to be brainwashed through and through. Reid dreamed of creating a legion of fact-spewing analysis-geysering sweater-vest-donning minimans, but recalled, with a sigh, that not all keepers would allow him to kidnap their minimans from the museum. If he desired to collect additional minimans, then he was going to have to find a human female, and the apparition at the door was definitely not her.

It was Hotch.

"Hi Hotch!" Reid greeted his boss brightly, trying to untwist his expression of unabashed glee that was now one eyebrow-wiggle short of creepiness.

"Uh...Hi Reid," Hotch frowned slightly at the strange expressions that Reid wore on his face whenever he answered the door.

"Did you bring them?" Reid peeked eagerly into the hallway.

"I did, but before I turn them over to you, I'm going to need you to swear an oath," Hotch said solemnly. "I promised JJ that I would make you swear the oath."

"An oath? What kind of oath?" Reid wondered.

"Repeat after me," Hotch began.

"Repeat after me," Reid repeated.

"No, I mean repeat after me when you swear the oath," Hotch glared a little.

"No, I mean repeat after me when you swear the oath," Reid repeated.

"Reid, stop it! Are you doing this on purpose?"

"Reid, stop it! Are you doing this on purpose?"

"Reid, I'm serious," Hotch could barely sustain his frown, much less his glare.

"Reid, I'm serious," Reid matched his boss, word for word.

"I, Spencer Reid, swear this oath to never take the minimans out of my apartment again, unless an UnSub comes after me at my apartment, in which case I shall leave the minimans in the safety of my apartment while the UnSub chases after me with his or her weapon of choice as was his or her intention all along," Hotch recited the oath from memory.

"I, Spencer Reid, swear this oath to never take the minimans out of my apartment again, unless an UnSub comes after me at my apartment, in which case I shall leave the minimans in the safety of my apartment while the UnSub chases after me with his or her weapon of choice as was his or her intention all along," Reid swore the oath.

"OK," Hotch checked his cell phone recording of the oath. "JJ should be satisfied with this. As promised, here they are..." the minimans peeked around Hotch's legs towards their adopted keeper.

"Uncle Spenny!" Jack ran into the apartment, stooped down to the floor, and watched Jason tie Reid's shoelaces together in a complicated untanglable knot.

"Spenny cry!" Henry crawled-slithered-lumbered into the apartment with a large plastic pale-clouded yellow butterfly in his mouth.

Reid pretended to cry, balling up his fists to hold them in front of his eyes while sniffling. He hoped that the display would be enough to wean Henry off his unhealthy obsesssions once and for all. Hotch stared at the spectacle and shook his head.

"I'm going to pick Sean up from the train station," Hotch said. "He's coming back from the Hamptons today, and he's vowing never to go back there again. JJ's picking Will up from the airport. She tells me that Will has learned absolutely nothing from his experience and is already planning his next fanboating vacation in the bayou."

"What time will you be back?" Reid asked.

"Probably no later than three," Hotch said. "You only have to watch them for a couple of hours. Remember, Reid, the oath!"

"No problem, Hotch," Reid nodded. "I, Spencer Reid, swear this oath to never take the minimans out of my apartment again, unless an UnSub comes after me at my apartment, in which case I shall leave the minimans in the safety of my apartment while the UnSub chases after me with his or her weapon of choice as was his or her intention all along."

"I'll leave you to it then," Hotch backed away from the keeper, now crawling with minimans knotting up all articles of unsecured clothing. "One more thing, Reid," he added with a hint of his usual glare. "If you ever try to play your infantile little repetition game at work..." he trailed off with an unspoken threat.

Reid trembled where he stood and painted an expression of falsified, but abject, remorse onto his face. Hotch, satisfied that both the oath and the threat would be heeded, turned and walked down the hallway. At the top of the stairs, he waved back at Reid, who stuck his arm out the door to wiggle his fingers, as he was frozen in place by the belting of his legs to each other.

Reid shut the door and locked it against the UnSubs. He shoo-ed the minimans off his legs. He turned and waddled, penguin-like, to the couch while herding his small flock in front of him. He remembered the documentary "March of the Penguins", in which the emperor penguins of Antarctica, during each hatching season, traversed the distance between their feeding and breeding grounds through unbelievable hardships of cold, snow, and starvation. It was the job of the male to incubate the eggs, so that after not eating for four months and losing half of his body weight, he may present a helpless screeching chick to his beloved mate. From there, the parents would take turns shuttling food between the sea and the land, until summer warmed into fall, and the ice shelf melted to unite the feeding and breeding grounds. Each hatching season was an arduous struggle, but it was all worth it in the end, when the chicks swam free in the sea, as long as they did not immediately fall prey to the predatory fishes, birds, and mammals that abounded in the open waters.

For the rest of the afternoon, Reid fed the minimans the Fruit of the Stupid Box. Jack and Henry sat on the floor with a bowl of pea dip between them, watching Looney Tunes and crunching down upon their carrots, nostril and non-nostril. Jason, being too old to be entertained by bunnies, piggies, duckies, kitties, birdies, coyoties, roadrunnies, mousies, and Tasmanian devilies for long, scrambled to another area of the floor, where Reid had laid out a chess set. In his homemade genius-designed chess set, the pawns were cockroaches, the knights were mantises, the bishops were scorpions, the rooks were tarantulas, and the king and queen were Carcharodon megalodon and Basilosaurus cetoides, respectively.

The inaugural chess game began just after lunchtime on a Saturday afternoon. In a few hours, Reid would have to take Jason back to the foster home where he now lived after he had removed himself from the care of his abusive father. Jason would have to go back to adjusting to his new foster parents, new foster siblings, and new school, where he had finally skipped all the grades that he needed in order to apply himself to his studies. Inspite of the uncertainties in his new life, the boy knew, in his well-developed ten-year-old brain, that he would never become a pawn of the foster care system. He knew that outside the big Colonial-style house in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he received physical security, was another home where he would receive everything else that he needed. He was a miniman, fortunately too young to be a human, and he had a keeper who understood the one tenet of parenting that a crazy old uncle had once explained to his own adopted miniman.

"With great power comes great responsibility", and there was no greater power and responsibility in the world than those of keeper over miniman.

* * *

Note: The episode referred to in this chapter is "Elephant's Memory", Season 3, Episode 16.

My next Tale of Fluff will be "Decor and Decorum", starring Reid with his canon OTP hookers, written in the literary style of Jane Austen. Goes off to re-read "Pride and Prejudice", which I hated until I grew up to like it. :)


End file.
